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 Water
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pick over and wash the barley.
Combine barley and water in a double boiler.
Cook and strain
Heat slowly and cook gently for six hours.
Strain the mixture and cool.
Flavor and serve
Flavor with fruit juice and sugar if desired.
Use as a beverage or in place of milk in recipes.
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.
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Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Its starch and soluble compounds slowly release into the water, giving the drink body and a mild grain flavor.
- Water
- Extracts flavor and starch from the barley during the long gentle cooking and forms the drink's base.
The step that matters
Heat slowly and cook gently. Starch in barley can scorch or stick to the bottom if heated too hard. A double boiler keeps the heat gentle so the liquid extracts flavor and body without burning.
“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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