Why it works: Barley and sugar work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 755 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Barley Water
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Thoroughly wash the pearl barley to remove any musty flavor.
Make the barley water
Put the barley over the fire in cold water and boil until reduced to one quart.
Strain the mixture.
Let it cool.
Add a little sugar if desired.
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.
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Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together755 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pearl barley
- Its starch and soluble compounds thicken the water and give the drink its body and mild grain flavor.
The step that matters
Boiling down to one quart. Boiling extracts flavor and starch from the barley, and stopping at the stated volume controls how concentrated and thick the drink becomes.
“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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