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Drink

Barley Water

A simple barley infusion made with water, lemon, sugar, and optional liqueur.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 484 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Barley Water

Ingredients

Directions

Make the barley base

  1. Combine pearl barley and 3 pints of cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Strain the barley and return it to the saucepan with 3 pints of boiling water.

  4. Simmer for about 20 minutes.

Flavour and serve

  1. Peel the rind of the lemon and place it in a jug.

  2. Add the strained lemon juice.

  3. Strain the barley water into the jug with the lemon.

  4. Sweeten to taste.

  5. When cold, add about 1 tablespoon of your preferred liqueur, 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. Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together484 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Pearl barley
Releases starch into the water, giving the drink its light body and slightly cloudy look.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the drink and balances the sweetness.
Lemon rind
Contributes aromatic oils from the peel that scent the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the lemon's tartness.

The step that matters

Simmer the barley. Simmering gently releases starch and flavour from the barley into the water. Simmering too briefly gives a thin, weak drink, while boiling hard can cloud it and make it taste harsh.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, 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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