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Barley Gruel

A simple barley gruel made with barley, water, port wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and port wine work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 45 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Barley Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Wash the barley thoroughly.

  2. Soak the barley in cold water, then drain.

Make the gruel

  1. Boil the barley in 1 quart of fresh boiling water until reduced by half.

  2. Strain the mixture to obtain the gruel.

Finish and serve

  1. Add ½ cup of port wine and loaf sugar to taste.

  2. Simmer together for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Rewarm as needed.

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 + port winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together45 recipes

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

  2. Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

  3. Port wine + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pearl or scotch barley
Its starch thickens the liquid as it cooks and gives the gruel its body.
Port wine
Adds fruity depth, aroma and some sweetness to the finished gruel.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness, adjusted to taste.

The step that matters

Boiling until reduced by half. Reducing concentrates the starch and flavour of the barley liquid. Stopping too early leaves the gruel thin, while over-reducing can make it too thick and scorch on the bottom of the pan.

“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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