Name: Barley Mead
Ingredients: juice of 4 limes; rind of 2 limes, pared thin; 4 tablespoons honey; ½ pound pearl barley; 2 quarts boiling water

Why it works: Lime and honey work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 679 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Barley Mead

Ingredients

Directions

Combine the juice of 4 limes, the thinly pared rind of 2 limes, 4 tablespoons of honey, and ½ pound of pearl barley in a jug.
Pour 2 quarts of boiling water over the mixture.
Let it cool, then strain it.

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.

Lime + honeytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together679 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lime + barleytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Honey + barleytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together78 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 starch and body, giving the drink its mild, grainy character after straining.
Honey: Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lime juice.
Limes: Supply the sour acidity and aroma; the pared rind adds fragrant oils to the infusion.