Skip to main content

Lemon Barley Cake

A soft moist cake, stodgy with barley and yet refreshing because of the lemon. Goes well with Vanilla ice cream, clotted cream, or custard.

By bbcgoodfood · From Open Recipes · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Barley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and 484 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

Makes 2 cakes

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcgoodfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Barley + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + milktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Ginger + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Flour + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Barley + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together78 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, almond):

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Turmericabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, almond. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).