Name: Barley Gruel
Ingredients: 1 oz pearl barley; 2 cups water; 1 strip lemon rind; 2 teaspoons sugar; ⅓ cup port wine

Why it works: Barley and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 484 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Barley Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Blanch the barley and strain it.
Simmer the barley with water, lemon rind, and sugar for 20 minutes.
Strain the mixture and add the port wine.

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.

Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together484 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Barley + port winetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together45 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon + port winetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,100 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together755 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Pearl barley: Provides the starch and body that thicken the gruel as it simmers.
Port wine: Adds sweetness, depth and a fruity aroma to the finished gruel.