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Compound Barley Gruel

A barley gruel simmered with sliced figs, raisins, liquorice root, lemon peel, and honey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and honey work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 228 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Compound Barley Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil 2 ounces of sliced figs, 3 ounces of cut raisins, 4 teaspoons of sliced liquorice root, and a little lemon peel in common barley gruel.

  2. Continue boiling until the mixture is reduced by half.

  3. Sweeten with honey 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 + honeytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lemon + honeytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,707 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Figs
Soften as they simmer, adding natural sweetness and body to the gruel.
Raisins
Soften as they simmer, adding sweetness and a chewy texture.
Liquorice root
Adds a distinctive sweet, aromatic flavour to the gruel.
Honey
Adds sweetness, stirred in at the end to suit taste.

The step that matters

Reducing the mixture by half. Boiling off water concentrates the sugars and flavours of the figs, raisins and liquorice root and thickens the liquid. Stopping too early leaves it thin and weak, while boiling too long makes it overly concentrated and sticky.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, raisin, honey. 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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