Name: Barley Joy Loaf
Ingredients: 2 cups pearl barley, ground coarse; 1 cup whole wheat kernel, ground; 2 cups sweet milk

Why it works: Barley and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 185 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Barley Joy Loaf

Ingredients

2 cups pearl barley, ground coarse
1 cup whole wheat kernel, ground
2 cups sweet milk

Directions

Prepare the dough

Mix the ground pearl barley and whole wheat thoroughly.
Add the sweet milk and knead quickly.

Shape and dry

Roll out the dough into a thin layer using a rolling pin.
Set the rolled dough out in the sun to dry.

Bake

For best results, bake on soapstone or copper covered with thin glass.

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.

Barley + wheattop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together185 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together598 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).