Name: Strengthening Drink
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon pearl barley; 2 pints water; a little cinnamon; a little nutmeg; thinly cut lemon peel; a small quantity of milk; sugar or honey to taste

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Strengthening Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the pearl barley in 2 pints of water, changing the water several times.
When the water is clear, add cinnamon, nutmeg, and lemon peel.
Strain the mixture and add a small quantity of milk.
If desired, sweeten with sugar or honey.

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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Barley + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together127 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Barley + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together136 recipes

Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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 base of the drink as it simmers in water.
Milk: Adds creaminess and a soft, mellow texture to the strained liquid.
Sugar or honey: Adds sweetness to balance the spices and lemon peel.

Swap the lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, cinnamon, nutmeg, milk, 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.