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
Wash the pearl barley thoroughly.
Make the barley water
Boil the barley in 2 quarts of water with a piece of lemon peel until the barley is soft and the water looks white.
Strain the mixture through a clean sieve.
Add a little lemon juice if desired.
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
- Pearl barley
- Its starch releases into the water, giving the drink its body and milky appearance.
- Lemon peel
- Adds aromatic oils that give the drink a light citrus fragrance.
The step that matters
Boiling until the barley is soft. The barley must cook long enough for its starch and flavour to leave the grain and soften the kernel. Stopping early leaves a thin, bland liquid and firm grains that are unpleasant to eat.
“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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