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Drink

Bran Water

A drink made by soaking wheat bran in water, washing, and simmering barley, optionally flavored with cream, sugar, or lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 185 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Bran Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bran

  1. Put the bran into a large bowl.

  2. Stir the cold water into the bran and let it soak overnight.

  3. Rub and squeeze the bran with your hands until all the flour is washed off.

  4. Strain through a fine sieve, pressing until the bran is dry.

Cook the barley

  1. Wash the barley thoroughly.

  2. Put the barley into a double kettle or saucepan with boiling water.

  3. Simmer for three hours.

  4. Strain and add the salt.

Finish

  1. Add cream and sugar for flavor, or lemon juice 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. Wheat + barleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Wheat + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together585 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Wheat bran
Soaked and strained to yield the starchy, flavorful liquid that forms the base of the drink.
Pearl barley
Simmered in boiling water to release its starch and body, thickening the liquid and adding a mild grainy flavor.
Cream
Optional; adds richness and softens the sharp, grainy taste of the bran water.

The step that matters

Washing the bran until the flour is removed. Rubbing and squeezing the bran in cold water loosens and rinses away the remaining starch-rich flour. Leftover flour would make the liquid cloudy and pasty rather than clean and light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, barley, cream, 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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