Skip to main content
Dessert

Barley Pudding

A sweet pudding made from pearl barley, milk, sugar, butter, and eggs, baked and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Barley Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and cook the barley

  1. Scald the barley.

  2. Cook the barley in the milk until thick.

Make the custard

  1. Add sugar, butter, and egg yolks.

  2. When cool, fold in the stiffly whisked egg whites.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 30 minutes in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

  2. Cover with meringue made from the remaining egg white and decorate.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Barley + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together79 recipes

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

  3. Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Its starch thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Cooks with the barley to form the thick, creamy base.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard as they set during baking.
Egg whites
Whisked and folded in, they trap air that lightens the pudding's texture.
Butter
Adds fat that gives richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue brown.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly whisked egg whites. Whites hold air only while whisked and cool. Folding gently keeps the bubbles intact, so the pudding stays light. Stirring vigorously deflates them and leaves the texture dense.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, butter, milk, egg, 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.

More barley pudding recipes

Pearl 5 See all 21 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes