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Barley Gruel
2 heaping tablespoonfuls (2 I heaping tablespoonful (I ozs.) pearl barley I strip lemon rind I quart (4 cups) water oz.) sugar 1 wineglassful sherry wine Wash the barley thoroughly; put it into a casserole with the water and the lemon rind and simmer until reduced to half the quantity; strain and add the sugar, reheat in the casserole, and add the wine.
This is barley water in its older, sweetened and fortified form, from the sickroom chapter of a book built around the covered stewpan. It needs almost no technique, but the vessel and the measures need translating.
- "Casserole" means a saucepanIn this book a casserole is a lidded flameproof pot used on the stovetop, not an oven-baked dish. Any small heavy saucepan does the job.
- WineglassfulA wineglass in period measure is about 2 fluid ounces, or a scant quarter cup. It is not a modern stemmed wine pour of 5 or 6 ounces.
- The barley and sugarThe recipe gives 2 heaping tablespoonfuls (2 ozs.) of pearl barley and 1 heaping tablespoonful (1 oz.) of sugar to a quart of water. Pearl barley is still sold under that name and is the right grain here; hulled or pot barley takes considerably longer to soften.
- Lemon rindPare a strip of zest with no white pith attached. Pith turns bitter over the long simmer and there is nothing to mask it.
- Reducing by halfA quart down to a pint over a bare simmer will take the better part of an hour. Rushing it at a boil makes the liquid cloudy and starchy rather than silky.
- Strain, then sweetenStrain the barley out before adding sugar, as written. The drained grains are edible and can go into soup; the point of the gruel is the thin starchy liquid.
- Add the wine off the heatReheat the strained liquid first and stir the sherry in last, as directed, so the aroma survives. If the drink is for a child, an invalid on medication, or anyone avoiding alcohol, leave it out entirely and add a little more lemon.
- YieldAbout 2 cups, or two servings. It thickens as it cools and can be loosened with hot water.
Barley water belongs to the oldest continuous tradition in Western sickroom cookery: the Greek and Roman ptisana, a thin decoction of barley given to fever patients, survives almost unchanged into nineteenth- and early twentieth-century "invalid cookery" chapters like this one. Before intravenous fluids and commercial rehydration drinks, a hospital or household nurse's main tools were exactly this sort of preparation: warm, mildly sweet, easy to swallow, and thought to be soothing to the stomach and the urinary tract. The wineglass of sherry reflects a period conviction, standard in medical writing of the day and long since abandoned, that fortified wine was a restorative for the weak.