Name: Milk
Ingredients: 1 part good, rich milk; 2 parts barley water; a little coarse sea salt

Why it works: Milk and barley work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 598 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Milk

Ingredients

1 part good, rich milk
2 parts barley water
a little coarse sea salt

Directions

Prepare

Boil and skim the good, rich milk.
Prepare barley water from prepared barley.

Combine

Mix one part boiled milk with two parts barley water.
Add a little coarse sea salt to the mixture.

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.

Milk + barleytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together598 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk: Provides fat and richness, giving the drink a creamy body and a mellow flavour.
Barley water: Supplies most of the liquid, diluting the milk into a lighter, thinner drink.

“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.