Name: Barley Water
Ingredients: ¼ pound pearl barley; 2 quarts water; 2 tablespoons white wine; sugar to taste

Why it works: Barley and white wine work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Barley Water

Ingredients

¼ pound pearl barley
2 quarts water
2 tablespoons white wine
sugar to taste

Directions

Combine pearl barley and water in a pot.
Boil until the mixture reduces by half, then strain.
Stir in white wine and sweeten to taste.

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.

Barley + white winetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together55 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together755 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

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 grain flavor that give the drink its body and taste.
White wine: Adds acidity and aromatic flavor to the finished drink.

“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.