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Drink

Barley Water

A simple drink made by soaking pearl barley in boiling water, then sweetening and optionally adding lemon juice and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Barley Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the pearl barley thoroughly.

  2. Place the barley in a pitcher and pour boiling water over it.

  3. Cover the pitcher and let it sit until cool.

Finish

  1. Drain off the water.

  2. Sweeten to taste and add lemon juice and grated nutmeg 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Barley + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Provides the starch and body that give the drink its mild, slightly cloudy character.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetener.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, nutmeg. 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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