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Barley Food

A simple porridge made from barley flour, water, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Food

Ingredients

Directions

Make the porridge

  1. Stir the barley flour and cold water to a smooth paste.

  2. Pour the mixture into the boiling water.

  3. Add the salt and simmer for 25 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the milk, add the milk sugar, and serve immediately.

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. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Robinson's patent barley
Its starch swells in hot liquid and thickens the water and milk into a porridge.
Fresh milk
Adds richness, softness and body to the porridge.
Milk sugar
Adds mild sweetness that complements the barley and milk.

The step that matters

Pouring the paste into boiling water. The barley starch needs to be added to hot liquid so it gelatinises and thickens evenly. Adding the paste to cooler liquid, or adding it too slowly, can leave the porridge lumpy or thin.

“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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