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Drink

Barley Water

A hot beverage made from pearl barley, raisins, lemon juice, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and raisin work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 57 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Barley Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the pearl barley well.

Make the barley water

  1. In a double boiler, combine the barley and water; boil for 2.5 hours.

  2. Add the raisins 1 hour before finishing.

Finish and serve

  1. Squeeze the lemon juice into a pitcher; sweeten and salt to taste.

  2. Strain the hot barley water over the lemon juice.

  3. Remove the raisins and add them back to the liquid.

  4. Discard the barley.

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. Barley + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Pearl barley
Releases starch and body into the water, giving the drink its soft, thickened texture.
Table raisins
Add natural sweetness and a mild fruity flavor as they soften in the hot liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the barley for the full 2.5 hours. Barley starch and flavor only come out through long, steady simmering. Cutting the boil short leaves the water thin and the flavor weak, so the liquid needs the full time at a gentle boil.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, raisin, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, raisin, 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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