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Barley Gruel for Invalids
INGREDIENTS for 1½ pint of gruel.-2 oz. of pearl barley, the rind of a small lemon, 1 quart and 1/2 pint of water, 3 glasses of port, sugar to taste. AVERAGE COST, 1s. to 1s. 6d., according to the quality of the wine.
Well wash the barley and boil it in 1/2 a pint of water for 15 minutes, pour this water off and add the quart of fresh water, and let it boil until the liquid is reduced to half the quantity; strain the water off, add the wine, sugar and lemon-peel; simmer for 5 minutes and put it away in a clean jug.
TIME. To be boiled until reduced to half.
A thin barley drink strengthened with port, from the invalid-cookery section that every large Victorian household manual carried. The method is sound; the proportions need translating.
- The first boil is a rinse, not cookingBarley is boiled 15 minutes in half a pint of water and that water is thrown away. This removes the starchy, slightly musty first extraction and gives a cleaner-tasting gruel — do not skip it or shortcut it by draining early.
- "3 glasses of port"A Victorian wine glass is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so roughly 6 fl oz (3/4 cup) in total, but the measure was never standardised and some sources put it nearer 2½ fl oz. Given the finished yield of 1½ pints, the drink is around a fifth wine — start with less and taste.
- Quantities and yield2 oz pearl barley is about 1/3 cup. The quart plus half pint is 50 fl oz in imperial measure, close to 6 US cups. Reducing by half and adding the port gives roughly 1½ imperial pints, or three to four cupfuls — several servings, meant to be kept in the jug and drawn on through the day.
- Lemon rindPare it thinly with a peeler so no white pith goes in; pith turns the gruel bitter over the five minutes of simmering and more so as it stands. Remove the peel before storing if the drink will sit more than a few hours.
- StrainingThe barley grains are discarded and only the cloudy cooking liquor is used. If you want body, press the grains lightly against the sieve; for the clear, almost watery barley water the original intends, let it drain untouched.
- Keeping"Put it away in a clean jug" assumed a cold larder and same-day use. Refrigerate and use within two days; the alcohol content is not high enough to preserve it.
- AlcoholPort was standard restorative practice in 1861 and is not one now. This is not a drink to give a sick child, anyone on medication, or anyone who should not be drinking. Made without the wine it is simply lemon barley water.
Barley water in some form is one of the oldest sickroom drinks in European medicine, prescribed in the Hippocratic writings as ptisan and still being recommended, largely unchanged, in nineteenth-century household manuals. Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management devoted a substantial section to "Invalid Cookery", on the assumption that the mistress of the house would nurse the sick at home and that diet was the main treatment available to her — thin, bland, easily swallowed preparations of barley, arrowroot, beef tea and gruel, often fortified with port, sherry or brandy on the then-current belief that wine was strengthening. The costing of 1s. to 1s. 6d. depending on the quality of the wine is a reminder that the port, not the barley, was the expense: the grain cost pennies, and the recipe is really a way of making a small amount of fortified wine go a long way.