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 Gruel
Ingredients
Directions
Wash the pearl barley.
Boil the barley in 1 quart of water until reduced to 1 pint.
Strain the mixture.
Add sugar and wine to taste.
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).
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Barley + winetop 22% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together128 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together9,581 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
- Provides the starch and body that thicken the liquid into a light gruel.
The step that matters
Boil the barley until reduced to 1 pint. Simmering long enough lets the barley's starch release and thicken the water, so the gruel has body. Stopping too early leaves it thin, and boiling too hard can scorch it on the bottom of the pot.
“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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