Name: Bakley Milk
Ingredients: ½ pound pearl barley; 1 quart new milk; white sugar to taste

Why it works: Barley and milk work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 598 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Bakley Milk

Ingredients

½ pound pearl barley
1 quart new milk
white sugar to taste

Directions

Parboil the pearl barley in water, then drain it.
Boil the parboiled barley in the new milk.
Sweeten with white sugar to taste.

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.

Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together598 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together755 recipes

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

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: Provides the body and thickening starch that give the milk a creamy, porridge-like texture.
New milk: Forms the liquid base and adds richness and mild sweetness as it simmers with the barley.

“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.