Agua Fresca 7. Barley Water
Published May 19, 2008 by Rachel Laudan
This, my friends, is a nice glass of barley water, milky in color, so mild in flavor as to be almost tasteless, a little body on the tongue, and one of the most ancient foods you are ever likely to run in to, the point where archaic drinks find common ground with the aguas frescas.
Long, long ago before Europeans ate raised wheat bread or the Chinese ate rice, barley was the world’s prestige grain. Barley bread was what Gilgamesh ate in ancient Mesopotamia, what Plato and Aristotle ate in Greece, and it was the bread of the Bible. Boiled barley would have been familiar to Confucius and to the unknown authors of the Vedas. The further back you go in history, the more important it was. Round about the beginning of our era, though, it began its long fall from grace. Now it is perhaps best known as an ingredient in beer, though much beer is now made from other grains.
If you poke about in many societies, though, barley still has a shadowy existence as a drink. A special treat in England when I was a child was lemon barley water, not home made but diluted from a bottle sold by Robinson’s, the company that makes jams and jellies. They also made “patent barley” so that mothers–following a tradition that went back at least to the Roman leader of the Senate, Cato in his book on Agriculture–could quickly put together barley water for a fussing baby, a sick child, an ailing grandmother, or for the whole family as something to cool them on a hot day. It’s still available but like so many such foods, it’s largest market appears to be in former colonies such as the Caribbean.
But this is to get ahead of the drink. To make it from scratch, you take some pearl barley, that is barley with the tight little hull polished off. Here’s some, labeled cebada perla, that is, pearl barley in Spanish.
Then to make about 2 cups of barley water, a third of a cup of barley to 2 cups of water and boil until the barley is soft, probably about half an hour at sea level.
Pour off the liquid and there is your barley water. (The barley that is left is perfect for barley and mushroom soup or beef barley soup).
In fact, barley water is usually brightened up with some kind of citrus. Just make a lemonade or a limonada as you normally would except use barley water instead of ordinary water. It is a delightful drink even if not quite the cure-all that it was long believed to be.
And it is the progenitor of a whole family of barley and barley-like drinks that will be coming soon to this screen.
Filed under Archaic Drinks, Food History, Just Good Eating, Uncategorized, agua fresca
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Nice post Rachel. Why did the world switch out barley? Is it because wheat and rice have more carbohydrates?
First of all thank you immensely for your website. You unite my two most fervent passions of Mexican cuisine and history.
The only agua de cebada I have came across here in San Diego is more horchata-like than clearer tea based. I think they use some sort of creamer to round out the flavors. Is this true in Mexico?
Hi Rachel,
Ancient Greek doctors had noticed the medicinal and cooling properties of barley. Ptisane, that’s the Greek name of barley water of gruel (depending on the ratio of barley to water), was used as an effective weapon against fever. Hippoctates himself was very advocate of barley water. Ptisane was also an easily prepared food for soldiers and a substitute for kid’s milk. However modern research blames it for the frequent references to kidney stones in children in the Hippocratic texts. Seasonings for ptisane included pig’s trotters or olive oil, salt, vinegar, leeks and dill or wine and honey etc.
Thank you so much for your wonderful posts.
Rajagopal, Why barley changed from a favored food to one that was barely tolerated is an interesting question and like many of the big changes in food history is only just beginning to be recognized, let alone investigated. It’s a mixture, I think, of changes in ways of grinding, the invention of new varieties of wheat with different properties, the invention of new kinds of wheat food such as Chinese bing, Indian flat breads (I’d guess though we have no dates on these), and raised wheat bread, plus the shift of the Han Chinese population toward the south and the northern Indian population toward the east, both better suited for rice.
Alex, any one who is fascinated by Mexico and by history has to be a friend of mine. In one sense barley water, agua de cebada, is horchata. In another sense, the two have grown miles apart. All part of the big family tree that we’ll be gradually tracing out.
Hi Mariana,
Thanks so much for that comment. Is ptisane still used in Greece?
Today ptisane is known simply as barley water, without seasonings, and is used as a folk medicine remedy for anthrax.
Thanks Rachel. It is a complex topic indeed. I think it will have something to do with yields as well - amount of wheat that can be produced from a hectare as well as the versaitility of the grain itself - wheat and rice score big in this area.
There is common theory that small beer/ale saved lives when given to children in the UK due to the lessened likelihood of getting a water borne pathogen. If this is true, I wonder if barley water would actually be more risky in these conditions?
Mind you not all Barley Waters were free of alcohol. Here is an 18th century English version.
To make Barley Water.
Boil a quarter of a pound of pearl barley in two quarts of water, skim it well, boil it half away, and then strain it. Sweeten it, but not too much, and put to it two spoonfuls of white wine. It must be drank a little warm.
Oh my goodness Mariana, I can’t imagine relying on barley water as an antidote to anthrax. You can’t stand a chance. And Rajagopal, wheat may be a good producer compared to non-grains but when the change from barley took place it was not a particularly good producer compared to other grains. In fact it was lousy producing only about 3 or 4 grains for each grain sown. Adam, that’s an interesting recipe for barley water. It would certainly make it more interesting! Dried raisins, figs and liquorice were other flavorings. As to health, it could be that small beer actually had more nutrients too and may even have been easier to digest. My stepdaughter as a tiny girl gurgled away on beer all across the Atlantic on one rough crossing. She could not keep anything else down and that was the doctor’s advice.
In Edinburgh at the old imfirmary they handed out low (2%) alcohol “Sweetheart” stout to new mothers. At the new hospital this has stopped, but the nurses and staff encouraged its use. The milk stouts contain lactose and are high in calories and tastes better then NHS food.
The best barley water of all is called barley wine (hic). It originated in England but is now found in other countries. It is a very strong ale with a fruity taste and an alcoholic content of six to nine percent. In Mexico some people still make something similar from malted corn rather than barley and they call it tesgüino (tez-GWEE-noh). Cheers!
Alex’ post got me thinking about horchata, too. Most people I know think of horchata as a rice drink with cinnamon but when I travel in Spain I get something tasting quite different and inquiry made it sound as though it was made from something like peanuts. A little googling brings the drink up as being based on chufa in Spain or rice, or ground almonds, or herbs&milk or other things and I’m having trouble figuring out, with so many bases, what is the commonality that makes any of these “horchata” and not something else.
Adam, As a new mother I’m sure I would have loved a little Sweetheart stout. About what you need after labor, surely.
Bob, your comment about barley wine sent me off to one of my most cherished books, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes Home Made Wines, Syrups and Cordials (1954). Their comment is that barley wine, like most of the other British cereal and fruit wines, actually depend on sugar for the fermentation and the barley is there for flavoring. There’s an interesting story here, I think, about British attempts, once sugar became relatively cheap in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to foster home-made non-grape wine making.
Kay, horchata is hugely complex and fosters strong emotions. Not as strong as the origins of pasta, but strong all the same. The common thread is barley and milkiness and I’m about to embark on it. And you are absolutely right about chufa nuts in Spain.
Great thread!
I grew up in Northwest Mexico, in the coastal city of Mazatlan and Agua de Cebada is a favorite in the summer as the most refreshing beverage for hot days. It is sold by street vendors, very cold with a color almost resembling hot chocolate. It is sweetened and spiced with cinammon, maybe a bit of lemon to liven the flavor.
Hello Arturo,
Thanks so much for the comment. I always appreciate first hand information. Why do you think it was so dark? It can’t have been just the cinnamon. Piloncillo perhaps?