Name: Barley Water with White Op Egg
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon coarse barley; water; 1 egg white

Why it works: Barley and egg work together. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 380 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Barley Water with White Op Egg

Ingredients

1 tablespoon coarse barley
water
1 egg white

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the barley

Wash the barley well with cold water, discarding the washings.
Boil the washed barley in water for 15 minutes.

Strain and finish

Strain the barley water into a bowl.
Whisk the egg white until frothy and add it to the warm barley water.

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.

Barley + eggtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together380 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse barley: Gives the water its mild, grainy flavour and some body as it simmers.
Egg white: Whisked to a froth, it adds a light, airy texture to the warm liquid.

“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.