Name: Barley Water
Ingredients: 1 teacup pearl barley; 2 quarts water; 1 cup raisins; juice of 3 lemons; sugar to taste; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Barley and raisin work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 57 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Barley Water

Ingredients

Directions

Make the barley water

In a double boiler, combine pearl barley and water.
Boil for 2.5 hours.
Add raisins 1 hour before finishing.

Finish and serve

Squeeze lemon juice into a pitcher, then sweeten and salt to taste.
Strain hot barley water over the lemon juice.
Remove raisins and add them back with the liquid.
Discard the barley.

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.

Barley + raisintop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together57 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together484 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,742 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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: Releases starch and body into the water as it simmers, giving the drink its thickness.
Raisins: Add gentle sweetness and a fruity flavour to the liquid as they cook.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.