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Dessert

Baked Barley Pudding

A baked pudding made from pearl barley, milk, lemon rind, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Barley Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash the pearl barley thoroughly and place it in a small pie dish.

  2. Cover the barley with cold milk.

Bake

  1. Let it swell in a 350°F (175°C) oven until all the milk is absorbed.

  2. Add more milk to the dish.

  3. Add the grated lemon rind and sugar to taste.

  4. Sprinkle powdered nutmeg on top.

  5. Return the dish to the oven.

  6. Cook slowly for 2 to 3 hours.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Barley + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  3. Barley + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together484 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl barley
Swells as it absorbs milk, giving the pudding its body and chewy texture.
Milk
Cooks with the barley and slowly reduces, creating a creamy, moist pudding.
Grated lemon rind
Adds aromatic citrus oils that brighten the flavour of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 2 to 3 hours. Barley starch needs long, gentle heat to soften fully and release its thickening starch into the milk. Rushing with high heat can scorch the milk on the bottom of the dish before the grain is tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, milk, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, milk, sugar, nutmeg. 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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