Name: Thick Welsh Barley Cakes
Ingredients: fine barley meal; skim milk; cold butter

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Thick Welsh Barley Cakes

Ingredients

fine barley meal
skim milk
cold butter

Directions

Make the dough

Combine fine barley meal and skim milk to form a stiff dough.
Roll out the dough to about ¾ inch thick.

Bake and serve

Bake on a small baking stone until cooked through.
Serve with cold butter.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together598 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).
Barley + buttertop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together481 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine barley meal: Forms the main structure of the dough and gives the cakes their body and flavour.
Skim milk: Hydrates the barley meal so it binds into a stiff, workable dough.
Cold butter: Adds richness and fat for flavour when served on the cooked cakes.

“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.