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Drink

Barley Water

A simple beverage made by steeping pearl barley with lemon peel and sugar in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Barley Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the pearl barley in 2-3 waters.

  2. Boil a kettle of water.

  3. Wipe the lemon clean and peel it thinly, avoiding the white skin.

Infuse and strain

  1. Place the washed barley in a jug.

  2. Add the lemon peel and sugar to the jug.

  3. Pour the boiling water over the barley in the jug.

  4. Cover the jug and let it cool in a cool place or on ice.

  5. Strain the water into a clean jug for use.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Its starch and soluble compounds slowly flavour and thicken the water, giving body to the drink.
Lemon rind
Its aromatic oils flavour the water with a bright citrus note without adding much juice.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the lemon peel.

The step that matters

Peel the lemon thinly, avoiding the white pith. The white pith is bitter, so including it would make the barley water taste harsh. Thin peel gives only the fragrant oils that flavour the drink.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, 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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