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Compound Barley Water

A simple barley water made by boiling pear barley, reducing it, and sweetening with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and barley share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Compound Barley Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Wash the pear barley with water to remove any foreign matter.

  2. Add ½ pint of water and boil for a short time. Discard the liquid, then pour 4 pints of boiling water over the barley.

Make the barley water

  1. Boil down the mixture until it reduces to 2 pints, then strain.

  2. Sweeten with sugar and add lemon peel if desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pear + barleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Pear + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together942 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pear barley
Provides the starch and body that give the drink its light, cloudy texture and mild flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the earthy taste of the barley.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic citrus oils for a fresh, fragrant flavour.

The step that matters

Boil down the mixture until it reduces to 2 pints. Reducing the liquid concentrates the flavour and starch from the barley. Stopping too early leaves a weak, thin drink, while over-reducing makes it too strong and syrupy. Straining afterward removes the spent grains so the liquid stays clear.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pear, barley, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, barley, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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