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Dessert

Barley Sugar, {foY Children.}

A sweet dessert made from boiled barley, sugar, lemon juice, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 484 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Barley Sugar, {foY Children.}

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the barley overnight.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the soaked barley in water until it becomes a clear, thin jelly.

  2. Add the sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Boil again until the mixture is clear and thick.

Set and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered plates or saucers and let it set hard.

  2. Add the egg white for improved texture.

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 + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Barley
Supplies starch that thickens with boiling into a clear, jelly-like base.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and, once boiled down, sets into a hard, glassy candy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the sugar syrup clear.
Egg white
Adds protein that can help give the set mixture a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Boiling again until clear and thick. The mixture must reach a high enough sugar concentration to set hard when cooled. Stopping too early leaves it sticky and soft, while boiling too long can scorch it or make it brittle.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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