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Drink

Barley Water

Barley Water is a simple beverage made by boiling barley in water, optionally flavored with lemon peel, cinnamon, raisins, or lemon slice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Barley Water

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the barley in the water for about 30 minutes.

  2. Add lemon peel or cinnamon for flavor.

  3. Optionally, include raisins or a slice of lemon for additional flavor.

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  3. Barley + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. 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

Barley
Releases starch and a mild grain flavor into the water, giving the drink body.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, cinnamon, raisin. 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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