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Dessert

Barley Cream

A sweet barley dessert made with pearl barley, milk, cream, eggs, flour, orange flower water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Barley Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Boil the pearl barley in milk and water until tender, then strain off the liquid.

  2. Put the barley into a quart of cream and let it boil briefly.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg whites and yolk with flour and orange flower water.

  2. Remove the cream from the heat and gradually mix in the eggs.

  3. Return to the heat to thicken, sweeten to taste, and pour into bowls for serving.

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

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

  2. Barley + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Barley + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together79 recipes

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

  4. Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Softens into the cream, giving the dessert body and a light, grainy texture.
Egg yolk and whites
Thicken the cream as they cook, setting it into a smooth custard.
Cream
Provides richness and fat, giving the custard a silky mouthfeel.
Milk
Cooks the barley and adds liquid that makes the base lighter than pure cream.
All-purpose flour
Stabilises the egg mixture so it thickens without curdling as it heats.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the hot cream. Eggs curdle if they meet too much heat at once. Remove the cream from the heat and mix the egg mixture in gradually, then return it to gentle heat only to thicken, so the custard stays smooth.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, milk, cream, egg, flour, 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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