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Drink

Barley Water

Barley Water is a simple beverage made by boiling barley in water, optionally flavored with lemon, sugar, figs, or other ingredients.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and honey work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 228 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Barley Water

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Wash or boil the barley in water.

  2. Simmer until it reaches a pleasant thickness, then strain.

  3. For a second boiling, use the strained barley to make another pint.

Flavor and serve

  1. Add lemon juice, peel, and sugar for flavor if desired.

  2. For medicinal use, mix powdered nitre with honey or sugar, then combine with boiling barley water.

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. Fig + honeytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

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

  2. Fig + raisintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  3. Barley + figtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together48 recipes

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

  4. Barley + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Barley
Its starch thickens the liquid as it cooks and gives a mild, grainy flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity for a bright, tart flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the lemon.
Honey
Adds sweetness and a smooth, rounded flavor.

The step that matters

Simmer until it reaches a pleasant thickness, then strain.. Barley starch thickens the liquid as it cooks and continues to thicken it as it cools, so the cook should stop at the desired thickness rather than letting it reduce too far.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, sugar, fig, raisin, honey):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, sugar, fig, raisin, honey. 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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