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Drink

Strengthening Drink

A warming drink made with pearl barley, cinnamon or nutmeg, lemon peel, milk, and sweetened with sugar or honey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Strengthening Drink

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the pearl barley in 2 pints of water, changing the water several times until it becomes clear.

  2. Add a pinch of cinnamon or nutmeg and thinly cut lemon peel.

  3. Strain the mixture and add a small quantity of milk.

  4. Sweeten with sugar or honey if desired.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Barley + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Starchy grain that gives the drink its body and thickens the liquid as it simmers.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the drink's flavour after straining.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, cinnamon, milk, 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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