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Barley Gruel

A simple barley gruel made with barley, water, port wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and port wine work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 45 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Barley Gruel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Wash the barley thoroughly.

  2. Soak the barley in cold water, then boil it.

  3. Pour off the first boiling water and add fresh boiling water.

Make the gruel

  1. Boil until the mixture is reduced by half.

  2. Strain the mixture to obtain the gruel.

Finish and serve

  1. Add ½ cup of port wine and loaf sugar to taste.

  2. Simmer together for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Rewarm as needed.

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 + port winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together45 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Port wine + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl or scotch barley
Starch from the grain thickens the water into a light, gruel-like body.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, fruity aroma and acidity to the finished gruel.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the wine and the mild grain flavor.

The step that matters

Pour off the first boiling water. The first boil draws out bitter and dusty compounds from the barley's surface. Discarding that water and starting with fresh boiling water gives a cleaner flavor and a smoother texture.

“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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