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Drink

Barley Water

A drink made by simmering pearl barley with water, figs, and raisins until reduced, then strained.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

  1. Add the pearl barley to ½ pint of boiling water and let it simmer for 5 minutes.

  2. Drain the barley and add 2 quarts of boiling water.

  3. Add the sliced figs and stoned raisins.

  4. Boil until the mixture is reduced to 1 quart.

  5. Strain the mixture to serve as a drink.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Starch from the grain thickens the liquid slightly and gives the drink body.
Sliced figs
Add natural sweetness and a soft, fruity flavor as they cook.
Stoned raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and fruity depth as they soften in the liquid.

The step that matters

Boil until reduced to 1 quart. Boiling evaporates water, concentrating the sugars from the fruit and the flavor from the barley. Boiling too long makes the drink overly strong and syrupy, while stopping too early leaves it weak and watery.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, fig. 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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