Skip to main content
Dessert

Pearl-Barley Pudding

A baked pudding made from pearl barley, milk, sugar, nutmeg, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Pearl-Barley Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the pearl barley thoroughly.

  2. Combine the barley, milk, sugar, and grated nutmeg in a deep dish.

  3. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven until thickened.

  4. Remove from the oven.

Bake and set

  1. Beat the eggs and mix them into the barley mixture until well combined.

  2. Butter a dish and pour the mixture in.

  3. Bake again for 1 hour until set.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Barley + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Provides the starchy body that thickens the pudding as it bakes.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that the barley cooks in and gives the pudding its creamy base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly at the surface.
Eggs
Set when heated, giving the baked pudding its firm, custard-like structure.

The step that matters

Baking until thickened before adding the eggs. The barley must be softened and thickened first, so the eggs can be stirred in without scrambling. Adding eggs to a very hot mixture can curdle them, and the final bake then sets the pudding evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, milk, sugar, egg, butter. 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.

You might also like

Barley MuffinsBarley Muffins6 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes