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Barley Cream for Invalids

A sweetened barley milk beverage made by cooking barley in milk and straining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and milk work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 598 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Barley Cream for Invalids

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the barley by rinsing it under cold water.

Cook and strain

  1. In a pot, combine the barley and milk, and cook until the barley is well cooked.

  2. Press the mixture through a fine sieve to separate the liquid from the barley.

Sweeten

  1. Sweeten the liquid with syrup of marsh mallow or venus hair 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. Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Barley + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + syruptop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley
Its starch thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the cream body.
Milk
Cooks with the barley to form the creamy base and carries its flavour.
Syrup of marsh mallow or venus hair
Adds sweetness and a distinctive floral flavour to the finished cream.

The step that matters

Cook the barley until fully soft. Barley starch must gelatinise and the grains must break down fully; undercooked grains stay gritty and the sieved liquid will be thin and grainy rather than smooth.

“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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