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Dessert

Pearl Barley Pudding

A sweet pudding made from pearl barley, milk, sugar, nutmeg, and eggs, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pearl Barley Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and cook the barley

  1. Wash the pearl barley thoroughly.

  2. Combine the barley, milk, sugar, and grated nutmeg in a deep pan.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until cooked.

Add the eggs

  1. Remove from the oven and beat the eggs.

  2. Mix the eggs into the barley mixture until well combined.

  3. Butter a baking dish and pour the mixture in.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake again for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Barley + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Forms the bulk of the pudding and thickens as it cooks in the milk.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the barley and gives the pudding its moisture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as they heat, giving the pudding a firm, custardy structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface during baking.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the milk and barley.

The step that matters

Mixing the eggs in fully. Eggs set when heated, so they must be evenly combined with the barley mixture before the second bake. Uneven mixing leads to patches of unevenly set custard and a grainy texture.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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