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Barley Water
1/2 tablespoon prepared barley salt sugar Mix barley with a small amount of cold water, add to boiling water, and simmer twenty minutes. Season with salt and sugar. Lemon juice may be added if desired.
A sickroom drink rather than a dish, and the printed text has lost most of its quantities in transcription. What survives is the method, which is sound.
- Missing amountsThe original gives one tablespoon of prepared barley and unmeasured salt and sugar, but never says how much boiling water. A pint (2 cups) to the tablespoon is a reasonable reconstruction and gives a drink of light body.
- Prepared barleyThis means patent or pearl barley ground to a flour, sold in tins for invalid cookery. Barley flour from a health-food shop is the closest equivalent. Whole pearl barley will not work in twenty minutes; it needs an hour or more and then straining.
- Slake it cold firstThe hinge of the recipe. Barley flour dropped straight into boiling water seizes into lumps that never disperse. Mix it smooth with a few tablespoons of cold water, then stir that slurry into the boiling water.
- SimmeringTwenty minutes at a bare simmer, stirred often. The starch will thicken slightly and then settle; a covered pan and low heat keep it from catching on the bottom.
- SeasoningA pinch of salt and a teaspoon or two of sugar per pint is a reasonable amount. The recipe does not say when to add the lemon juice; off the heat keeps the flavour fresher.
- Yield and keepingAbout two cups if a pint of water is used, one or two servings. It separates as it stands and should be stirred or shaken before drinking; make it fresh rather than holding it more than a day in the refrigerator.
Barley water is a very old item in Western cookery, related to the Greek ptisane, a thin barley decoction that figures in the Hippocratic writings on acute disease and was long regarded as suitable food for the feverish. Versions appear in medieval and early modern invalid cookery, and by the nineteenth century many English and American household manuals carried one, often with lemon and sugar to make it palatable. The lemon-flavoured bottled barley water still sold in Britain descends from the same commercial 'patent barley' trade.