Name: Barley Wine
Ingredients: ½ pound French barley; 3 pints water; 1 quart white wine; ½ pint borage water; ½ pint clary water; a little red rose water; juice of 5-6 lemons; ¾ pound fine sugar; thin yellow rind of 1 lemon

Why it works: Borage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 102 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Barley Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley water

Boil the barley in three waters.
Save 3 pints of the last water.

Make the wine

Mix the saved water with white wine, borage water, clary water, red rose water, lemon juice, sugar, and lemon rind.
Brew all ingredients quickly together.
Strain the mixture and bottle it up.

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.

Borage + lemontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together102 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Barley + boragetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,832 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
White wine + boragetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together27 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together484 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

French barley: Provides the grainy base and the starchy body of the drink.
White wine: Adds alcohol and acidity, giving the drink its wine character.
Fine sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the lemon and wine.
Lemon juice: Adds sharp acidity and fresh citrus flavour.

Swap the borage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, white wine, rose, lemon, sugar):

Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Cinnamonfits about as well
Boragethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, white wine, rose, lemon, 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.