Skip to main content
Main

Barley Porridge

A warm barley porridge cooked with water, milk, currants, served with cream and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Barley Porridge

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and cook

  1. Soak the pearl barley in water with baking soda for 6 hours.

  2. Drain and rinse the barley.

  3. Cook the barley in 1 quart of lukewarm water until tender.

  4. Drain again and add the milk and dried currants.

  5. Stew slowly for 30 minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into cups to form and refrigerate overnight.

  2. Turn out the porridge and serve with cream and sugar.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Forms the bulk of the porridge and sets into a firm, tender body as it cooks and chills.
Baking soda
Softens the barley's outer hull during soaking, helping it cook more tender.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the texture and mellowing the flavour as it stews.
Dried currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Stew slowly for 30 minutes. Gentle, slow heat lets the barley absorb liquid evenly and turn tender without scorching the milk, which can burn and stick to the pot when heated too fast.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

More barley porridge recipes

Pearl 3 See all 39 →

You might also like

Cream of Barley SoupCream of Barley Soup10 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes