[Sca-cooks] How old is barley water?

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Thu May 17 16:10:37 PDT 2007


On May 17, 2007, at 6:56 PM, Terry Decker wrote:

> Barley water is documented in Anthimus (6th Century) as a drink for  
> those
> ill with fever.  As a drink, you may come across it referenced as  
> orgeat and
> orgemonde, where it is mixed with anise, fruit or almonds.
>
> Bear

Which is interesting, since at some point we seem to have barley- 
based drinks evolving over the years into almond-based drinks... it  
may be a total coincidence that we have barley / hordeum at one end  
of the line and modern orgeat and orzata at the other, but I suspect  
there may have been a sort of sprawl or shift where almond-flavored  
barley drinks lost their barley element, possibly as a result of a  
previous shift from barley to barley sugar to ordinary sugar, with  
the almond element remaining something of a constant.

I guess it's a variant of the same process that allows for blancmange  
that is neither white nor rice-based.

Adamantius 
   



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