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Drink

Barley Water

A simple barley infusion made with pearl barley, water, lemon rind, and sugar, served as a soothing drink.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Prepare the barley

  1. Wash the pearl barley well in two or three washes.

  2. Pour 3 cups of cold water over the barley and simmer until the water has reduced by half.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Boil the strained mixture for half an hour for a fever drink.

Flavour and serve

  1. Strain the boiled mixture into a jug with the lemon rind and sugar.

  2. Cover the jug and infuse for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the lemon rind.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Provides the starch and body that give the water its mild, slightly thick texture.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic oils and a bright citrus flavour during infusing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the lemon and the grain flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer until the water has reduced by half. Simmering concentrates the barley's flavour and starch. Stopping too early leaves the drink weak, while over-reducing makes it too thick and strong.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, 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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