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Barley Pudding

A baked barley pudding with milk, sugar, nutmeg, eggs, currants, candied peel, and apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Barley Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the barley

  1. Wash the barley and simmer it in a small amount of water for a few minutes.

  2. Pour off the water.

Make the pudding

  1. Add milk and flavorings like sugar and nutmeg.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix the beaten eggs into the milk and barley mixture.

  3. Butter a deep dish.

  4. Pour the pudding mixture into the dish, leaving space for the fruit.

  5. Add currants, candied peel, and apple pieces to the dish.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for one hour.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley
Provides the bulk and starchy body that gives the pudding its substance as it cooks.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the milk and barley into a custard-like pudding.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that cooks the barley and forms the creamy custard base.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.
Apples
Add moisture and a tart, fresh contrast to the rich custard as they bake.

The step that matters

Pour off the water after simmering the barley. Removing the cooking water leaves the barley's starch to absorb the milk and eggs, so the pudding sets properly rather than turning watery.

Swap the currant

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

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

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