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Drink

Barley Water

Barley Water is a simple beverage made by boiling pearl barley in water and adding optional flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Boil ¼ pound of pearl barley in 1 gallon of water until soft and white.

  2. Strain off the water.

  3. Add currant jelly, lemon, or milk to taste.

  4. Alternatively, wash common barley and simmer in 3 to 4 pints of water with a little lemon peel.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Its starch releases into the water, giving the drink its body and mild, cereal flavour.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour to balance the plain barley liquid.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that lift the flavour of the barley water.

The step that matters

Boiling the pearl barley until soft and white. Barley must cook long enough for its starch and grains to soften fully. Undercooked barley stays firm and gives little flavour or body to the liquid, so the cook should judge by texture rather than time.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, currant, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, currant, milk. 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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