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Lemon

A barley and cornmeal flatbread baked until golden, served hot with stewed or fresh apricots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and flour work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 582 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix barley flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Work in the shortening with a fork.

  4. Add enough ice water to form a soft dough.

Bake and serve

  1. Roll out the dough to your desired thickness.

  2. Bake until thoroughly cooked.

  3. Serve hot with stewed or fresh apricots.

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. Barley + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Barley + apricottop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Flour + apricottop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,068 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley flour
Forms the base of the dough, giving the bread its structure and nutty flavor.
Cornmeal
Adds a coarse, grainy texture to the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lift the bread so it rises and bakes up light.
Shortening
Coats flour particles to tenderize the dough and add richness.

The step that matters

Add enough ice water to form a soft dough. Too much water makes the dough sticky and tough, while too little leaves it crumbly. Cold water keeps the fat firm, which helps the bread stay tender.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, flour. 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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