Why it works: Barley and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 484 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓
Thin Barley Water for Drink
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash the pearl barley in two or three cold waters.
Add the barley to 1 quart of boiling water.
Steep
Let it stand uncovered near the fire for 2 hours. Do not boil the mixture.
Flavour and sweeten
Add the lemon slices and peel.
Sweeten to taste.
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 + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together484 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pearl barley
- Releases starch and flavour into the water, giving the drink a light body and a cloudy look.
- Lemon slices
- Add acidity and a bright, sharp taste that balances the sweetener.
- Lemon peel
- Adds aroma from the fragrant oils in the skin.
- Sweetener
- Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the lemon.
The step that matters
Do not boil the mixture. Keeping the steeping liquid below a boil extracts flavour and starch gently. Boiling can pull out more starch, making the drink heavier, and it drives off the fresh lemon aroma.
“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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