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Barley-Water, to Make
INGREDIENTS.-2 oz. pearl barley, 2 quarts boiling water, 1 pint cold water, rind of 1 and juice of 2 lemons, sugar. AVERAGE COST, 4d.
Wash the barley in cold water; put it into a saucepan with the above proportion of cold water, and when it has boiled for about 1/4 hour, strain off the water, and add the 2 quarts of fresh boiling water. Boil it, with the lemon-peel, till sufficiently flavoured, until the liquid is reduced one half; add the juice and sweeten, strain it, and it will be ready for use.
A very pleasant drink may be more quickly prepared by using "Robinson's Patent Barley," following the directions given with each packet.
TIME.-Boil until liquid is reduced one SUFFICIENT to make 1 quart. half.
Baroness Pudding (Author's Recipe). INGREDIENTS for a large pudding. lb. of suet, lb, of raisins, weighed after being stoned, lb. of flour, pint of milk, 1/4 saltspoonful of salt. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 2d.
Prepare the suet, by carefully freeing it from skin, and chop it finely stone the ; stone the raisins, and cut them in halves, and mix both these ingredients with the salt and flour; moisten the whole with the above proportion of milk, stir the mixture well, and tie the pudding in a floured cloth, which has been previously wrung out in boiling water. Put the pudding into a saucepan of boiling water, and let it boil, without ceasing, 4½ hours. Serve with plain sifted sugar only, a little of which may be sprinkled over the pudding.
Two recipes have run together on this page: a lemon barley water and the Baroness Pudding that follows it. The barley water is complete; the pudding's ingredient quantities have been mangled in the original printing.
- The first boil is discarded for a reasonThe first boil is discarded -- Barley is boiled a quarter of an hour in a pint of water and that water thrown away. The recipe gives no reason; blanching of this kind is usually explained as carrying off dust and loose starch, which would tend to leave a clearer rather than gluey drink.
- Quantities and yield2 oz pearl barley is a scant third of a cup; 2 quarts is 8 cups. Reduced by half you end with about 1 quart, which is what the book states. The book gives no time for this stage, only 'until the liquid is reduced one half', so it needs a steady boil rather than a simmer and watching rather than timing.
- Sugar is left to the cookNo amount is given. Start with 2 tablespoons for the quart and add more off the heat; the lemon juice goes in at the end, so judge the balance once it is cool, when the drink will taste less sweet than it does hot.
- Lemon rindPare the rind in strips with a peeler and leave the white pith behind. Boiled for half an hour, pith turns the drink bitter in a way sugar will not fix.
- Robinson's Patent BarleyA proprietary prepared barley sold in packets through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and no longer available. Ignore the shortcut and use pearl barley from any supermarket.
- Keeping itThere is no preservative here beyond lemon juice and sugar. Strain, cool quickly and refrigerate; it will keep two or three days and should be shaken before pouring, as fine starch settles out.
- The Baroness Pudding quantities are lostThe original as printed here reads "lb. of suet, lb. of raisins, lb. of flour, pint of milk" with the fractions dropped in the typesetting. The proportions are genuinely ambiguous as given, and any figures supplied would be a guess; a suet pudding recipe with intact measurements should be used instead.
- Boiling a pudding in a clothThe cloth is scalded, wrung out and floured so the flour forms a skin that keeps water out. The pot must stay at a full boil for the whole four hours, topped up with boiling water from a kettle, or the pudding takes on water and turns sodden. A greased pudding basin covered with pleated foil and steamed is the modern equivalent.
- SuetBeef suet from a butcher needs its papery membrane stripped before chopping, and it is far easier to grate if frozen first. Packet shredded suet, beef or vegetarian, substitutes directly by weight.
Barley water belongs to the sickroom more than the tea table. Boiled barley decoctions were prescribed as a demulcent for fevers, coughs and irritated kidneys long before Mrs Beeton. The lemon version, sweetened and cooled, is the one that survived into general drinking and eventually onto the courts at Wimbledon. The reference to "Robinson's Patent Barley" is a reminder of how quickly branded convenience goods entered the Victorian kitchen: a proprietary prepared barley preparation, sold in packets with its own directions, that the book is content to recommend alongside the longhand method. An average cost of fourpence is given.