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Drink

An Anti-bilious Diet Drink

A drink made from barley, apples, vinegar syrup, and lemon juice to aid digestion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

An Anti-bilious Diet Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Make the decoction

  1. Boil the barley heads in water for a while.

  2. Add the quartered rennet apples and continue boiling.

  3. Strain the mixture through a cloth.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the vinegar syrup and lemon juice.

  2. Serve chilled.

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. Barley + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Apple + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,884 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar syrup
Adds sharp acidity that balances the drink's sweetness.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity and a fresh citrus lift.
Rennet apples
Contribute fruity flavour and natural sweetness as they simmer.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, apple, vinegar, syrup. 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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