Name: Barley Water, with White of Egg
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon coarse barley; 1½ pints clean water; a pinch of salt; sugar to taste; 1 egg white

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Barley Water, with White of Egg

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley water

Wash the barley well with cold water and discard the washings.
Boil the barley in 1½ pints of clean water for an hour in a covered saucepan.
Add a pinch of salt and sugar to taste, then strain the mixture.

Finish with egg white

To 4 to 6 ounces of the prepared barley water, add the white of 1 egg.

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.

Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together755 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Barley + eggtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together380 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

Coarse barley: Its starch dissolves into the water during long boiling, thickening the drink and giving it body.
Egg white: Adds protein and a light, frothy body to the prepared barley water.

“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.