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Barley Avater

A barley porridge cooked with figs, raisins, lemon juice, nutmeg, and sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Barley Avater

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the barley

  1. Put pearl barley into boiling water.

  2. Simmer for a few minutes.

  3. Drain the barley.

Make the porridge

  1. Add 2 quarts of boiling water, figs, and raisins.

  2. Boil slowly until reduced to about ½.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Finish and serve

  1. Sweeten to taste.

  2. Add lemon juice.

  3. Add nutmeg if desired.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Fig + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together510 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Barley + figtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together48 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
Provides the body and starchy thickening that gives the porridge its texture.
Figs
Add natural sweetness and a soft, thick texture as they break down during boiling.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pieces that mellow during simmering.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil slowly until reduced to about ½. Slow boiling lets the barley and fruit release starch and flavour gradually while the liquid evaporates. Boiling too hard can scorch the bottom and make the texture uneven.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, fig, raisin, lemon, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, fig, raisin, lemon, sugar. 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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