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Dessert

Barley Sugar for Children

A sweet syrup made by cooking barley until soft, mashing, straining, and mixing with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and sugar work together. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 755 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Barley Sugar for Children

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the barley

  1. Soak the barley in lukewarm water for 2-3 minutes.

  2. Drain the barley.

  3. Place the barley in a pot with 4-5 quarts of water.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Cook until the barley is very soft.

Make the jelly

  1. Remove the pot from heat.

  2. Mash the barley as well as possible.

  3. Strain the mash, discarding the solids.

  4. If the remaining liquid does not form a jelly when cool, boil the barley longer.

Finish

  1. Mix the jelly with sugar.

  2. Fry the mixture until done.

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. Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Barley
Provides the starch and gelling material that forms the jelly base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the jelly set into a firmer, sweet mass.

The step that matters

Testing the jelly on cooling. Barley must be cooked long enough to release enough starch and gelling material. If the strained liquid does not jell when cool, it needs more boiling, otherwise the final mixture will not set properly.

“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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