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 Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the barley-water and rock candy together without stirring.
Once boiled, pour the mixture into buttered pans.
Score the mixture into long flat sticks while it is still warm.
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
- Rock candy
- Provides the sugar that sets into a hard, clear, brittle candy as the mixture cools.
- Barley-water
- Supplies the liquid in which the sugar dissolves before boiling to the candy stage.
The step that matters
Boil without stirring. Stirring a boiling sugar syrup can encourage sugar crystals to form, which makes the candy grainy instead of smooth and glassy. Letting it boil undisturbed keeps it clear and sets it hard.
“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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