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Barley Gruel

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 127 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Barley Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the pearl barley.

  2. Boil the barley in 2 quarts of water with the cinnamon until reduced to 1 quart.

  3. Strain the mixture and return it to the saucepan.

Finish

  1. Add sugar and port wine, then heat up.

  2. Serve as 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. Barley + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + port winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Its starch thickens the cooking liquid and gives the porridge body as it softens.
Port wine
Adds fruity depth, sweetness and aroma to the porridge.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, adjusted to taste.

The step that matters

Boiling the barley until reduced to 1 quart. Reducing the liquid concentrates the cinnamon and barley flavour and lets the barley starch thicken the mixture. Stopping too early leaves it thin and weak, while over-reducing makes it stiff and intensely flavoured.

“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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