Name: Barley Jelly
Ingredients: 31/2 pints of boiling water upon; half done

Barley Jelly

A dessert made by steeping pearl barley, cooking it with boiling water, adding sugar and lemon essence, then setting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription

Barley Jelly

Ingredients

31/2 pints of boiling water upon
half done

Directions

Prepare the barley

Wash the pearl barley.
Steep 6 oz of pearl barley for 6 hours.
Pour 3 ½ pints of boiling water over the barley.

Stew and set

Stew the mixture quickly in a covered jar in a hot oven until the barley is perfectly soft and the water is absorbed.
When the barley is half done, add 6 oz of sugar and a few drops of lemon essence.
Continue stewing for a total of 2 ½ hours, which yields a better colour than longer preparation.
Pour the mixture into a mould to set.

By T. R. Allinson. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley (in the method): Provides the starchy body that thickens the water into a soft, set jelly.
Sugar (in the method): Adds sweetness and helps give the set jelly its body.

“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.