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Barley Water
2 tablespoons pearl barley 2 quarts cold water Wash barley, soak several hours in cold water and boil gently in same water for 2 hours; or put into double boiler and cook for 4 hours or until reduced one-half. Lemon juice and sugar or salt to taste may be added if desired.
A simple invalid drink that needs little translation, though the proportions and cooking times reflect a period when barley water was expected to be nearly flavourless.
- Pearl barleyStill sold under the same name. Two tablespoons to two quarts is a very thin brew; a quarter cup gives a drink with more body.
- YieldThe double-boiler method is cooked until reduced one-half, which leaves roughly a quart, or four glasses. It thickens slightly as it cools.
- Strain itThe recipe never says to strain, but barley water means the liquid only. Pour through a fine sieve while hot and press the grains lightly; the spent barley can go into soup.
- The double boilerThe long double-boiler cooking allows unattended simmering without scorching or boiling dry. On a modern hob, a heavy covered saucepan at a bare simmer for 90 minutes to 2 hours does the same work, topped up with hot water if it reduces too fast.
- Soaking"Several hours" is vague; an overnight soak is convenient and shortens the cooking. Boiling in the soaking water keeps whatever starch has leached out.
- FlavouringAdd lemon juice and sugar after straining and off the heat, so the juice keeps its brightness. Lemon zest steeped in the hot liquid for ten minutes gives more perfume than juice alone.
- KeepingNothing in this preserves it. Refrigerate and drink within two days; it sours quickly and can go slimy.
Barley water belongs to the old sickroom pharmacy rather than the kitchen proper, which is why it sits in the invalid cookery chapter alongside beef tea, gruel and arrowroot. Barley decoctions as a drink for the feverish go back to classical medicine, where they were prescribed for their supposed cooling and soothing qualities, and they recur throughout later English domestic manuals. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century nursing advice leaned heavily on such bland, starchy liquids because they were among the few things a patient with a disordered stomach could be persuaded to swallow, and because they carried some calories in a form thought easy to digest. Sweetened lemon barley water of this kind is the domestic forerunner of the bottled barley water later sold in Britain and associated with tennis. In a general cookbook of this era, an invalid chapter was a standard feature, since home nursing was assumed to be the household's job.