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DECOCTION OF BARLEY
(Barley water.) Wash 2½ ounces of pearl barley, then boil it in 1/2 pint of water for a short time. Throw this water away, and pour on the barley 4 pints of hot water; boil slowly down to 2 pints and strain. Soothing and nourishing. Used as a diluent drink in fevers and in inflammation of mucous surfaces, especially those of the urinary organs.
A plain grain infusion, and the method still works: the only things that need translating are the quantities, the vessel size and the medical framing.
- The quantities2 1/2 ounces of pearl barley is about 1/3 to 1/2 cup by volume, roughly 70 g. Four pints is 8 cups if the book is using US measure; if you are working from an imperial pint it is 10 cups, and the finished yield changes accordingly. Either way you are reducing by half.
- The first boil is not optionalThe first boil — that discarded half pint of water carries off surface starch and dust from stored grain. Skipping it tends to give a cloudier result.
- How long "boil slowly down" takesAt a bare simmer in a wide pan, halving 4 pints will take an hour or more depending on the pan; go by volume rather than the clock. Keep it at a lazy bubble; a hard boil throws starch into suspension and clouds the result.
- StrainingA fine sieve lined with a double layer of muslin or a coffee filter gives the clear liquid the original intends. Pressing the grain through defeats the purpose.
- Do not throw out the barleyThe drained grain is fully cooked and perfectly good in soup or a salad.
- FlavouringThe recipe is deliberately bland, being intended as a diluent. Lemon peel added during the last ten minutes, or lemon juice and a little sugar stirred in after straining, is a common domestic variant and does no harm.
- KeepingThere is no sugar, acid or alcohol here to hold it. Cool it quickly, refrigerate, and use within two days; a starchy liquid left at room temperature sours fast.
- The medical claimsBarley water is a fluid and a mild source of carbohydrate, nothing more. Treat the lines about fevers and inflammation of the urinary organs as period belief, not instruction.
Barley water belongs to the oldest layer of European sick-room cookery, descending from the Greek and Roman ptisan (the word survives in French tisane), a thin barley decoction prescribed by classical physicians and still being recommended, essentially unchanged, in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century domestic medicine. Its appeal was that it supplied liquid, it went down when nothing else would, and it was thought to coat and soothe irritated surfaces, which may be why this entry singles out the urinary tract. The formal, pharmacy-flavoured title, "Decoction of Barley," belongs to the register of the medical dispensatories, and preparations of this kind circulated between medical texts and domestic manuals. Lemon-flavoured barley water later shed the sickbed associations altogether and became an ordinary summer drink, particularly in Britain.