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 Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the barley
Soak the barley in lukewarm water for 3 minutes, then drain.
Cook and strain
In a saucepan, combine the soaked barley and water, and cook over high heat until the barley is almost mushy.
Remove from heat, mash the barley, and strain it as well as possible.
If cooked sufficiently, the liquid will turn into a jelly.
Sweeten and fry
Mix the jelly with sugar and fry it.
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
- Barley
- Provides starch that thickens the cooking liquid into a jelly as it cooks.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to the jelly before it is fried.
The step that matters
Cook the barley until almost mushy. The barley's starch must break down and release into the water so the strained liquid can set into a jelly. Barley cooked too briefly releases too little starch and will not form the jelly.
“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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