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Barley Segas for Children

A candy made by boiling barley, mashing it into a jelly, sweetening, and frying until solid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and sugar work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 755 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Barley Segas for Children

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Soak the barley in lukewarm water for 2 to 3 minutes and drain.

  2. Place the barley in a stewpan with 4 to 5 quarts of water and bring to a boil.

  3. Cook until the barley is very soft, then remove from heat.

Make the jelly

  1. Mash the barley as well as possible and strain, discarding the solids.

  2. If the remaining liquid does not form a jelly when cool, it was not boiled enough.

Make the candy

  1. Mix the jelly with sugar and fry it until it becomes candy.

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 + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 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

Barley
Its starch releases into the water and sets into a firm, jelly-like liquid when cooled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, once cooked down, gives the jelly its candy texture.

The step that matters

Boil the barley until the liquid will set. Barley starch must be cooked thoroughly to release and thicken into a liquid that gels when cool. Under-boiled liquid stays runny and will not form a jelly for the candy.

“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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