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Drink

Barley Water

Barley water is a sweetened beverage made by boiling pearl barley with water, figs, raisins, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and raisin work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Barley Water

Ingredients

Directions

Make the barley base

  1. Boil pearl barley in ½ pint water for 45 minutes.

  2. Add 2 quarts boiling water, chopped figs, and seeded raisins.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes and strain.

Finish and sweeten

  1. Add a little lemon juice and sweeten to taste.

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. Fig + raisintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  2. Barley + figtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together48 recipes

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

  3. Barley + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

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

  4. Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Its starch and flavour release into the water, giving the drink body and a mild grain taste.
Figs
They add natural sweetness and a rich, fruity flavour to the liquid.
Seeded raisins
They add concentrated sweetness and a deeper fruit flavour as they simmer.
Lemon juice
Its acidity brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
It adds sweetness, adjusted to taste at the end.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, fig, raisin, sugar. 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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