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
Wash the barley thoroughly.
Simmer the barley gently in 3 pints of water with a bit of lemon peel.
Strain before serving.
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.
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Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together484 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Common barley
- Provides the starch and mild flavour that give the drink its body and taste.
- Lemon peel
- Adds aromatic citrus oil and a light, fresh flavour to the water.
The step that matters
Simmer the barley gently. Gentle simmering extracts flavour and starch from the barley without breaking the grains apart or making the liquid cloudy and bitter. A hard boil can release more bitter compounds and cloud the 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.
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