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Barley Pudding

A baked pudding made with pearl barley, milk, sugar, nutmeg, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Barley Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a deep pan, combine the washed barley, milk, sugar, and grated nutmeg.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in the oven until set.

  2. Remove from the oven and beat the eggs in a separate bowl.

  3. Mix the beaten eggs into the barley mixture until well combined.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake again for 1 hour.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Barley + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  3. Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Starch that swells and thickens as it absorbs milk, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Liquid that cooks the barley and forms the creamy base of the pudding.
Eggs
Proteins that set during baking, binding the pudding into a soft, sliceable custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the texture of the finished pudding.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the milk.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins set with heat, and overbaking makes them tighten and curdle, leaving the pudding dry and grainy. Stop when the centre is just set and still slightly wobbly, since the pudding firms as it cools.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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