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Barley-Water

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Barley-Water

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

Parboil the barley

  1. Wash the pearl barley thoroughly.

  2. Boil the barley in 2 quarts of boiling water for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the barley and return it to the pot with fresh boiling water.

Simmer and flavor

  1. Let it boil gently until nearly half has evaporated.

  2. Strain again and flavor with sugar, lemon juice, and a piece of lemon peel.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + lemontop 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).

Sugar and lemon 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
Releases starch and mild grain flavor, giving the liquid a light body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor.
Lemon peel
Contributes aromatic oils that scent the drink.

The step that matters

Let it boil gently until nearly half has evaporated. A gentle simmer concentrates the barley liquid evenly without breaking up the grains. A hard, rapid boil can cloud the liquid and reduce it unevenly, so the flavor and body become harder to control.

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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