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Drink

Barley Milk

Barley milk is a warm beverage made by boiling pearl barley in milk and water, sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and milk work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 598 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Barley Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the pearl barley well.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the barley in 1 pint of milk and ½ pint of water for 2 hours.

  2. Sweeten with 2 teaspoons of sugar.

  3. Serve warm.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 releases during simmering, thickening the liquid and giving the drink body.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the flavour of the barley and milk.

The step that matters

Boil the barley in milk and water for 2 hours. Milk contains sugars and proteins that can scorch on the base of the pan during a long simmer, leaving a burnt taste. Keeping the heat gentle and the liquid at a low simmer helps prevent this while the barley softens and thickens the drink.

“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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