Recipe for Kykeon
(Barley water)

from Hesychius

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Roman Cookery: Ancient Recipes for Modern Kitchens.

Yes, this book has a new cover, but I like this one better. Blah, I am so horrible.

Kykeon (from the Greek “to mix, stir”) was a beverage of water and barley (sometimes flavored with mint or thyme) popular among the working, 'lower' class of ancient Greece. In the time of the Roman Empire, Kykeon was still a popular drink made from water, wine, honey and barley with various herbs added to individual taste. This common drink, however, was regarded in much the same way a person in the modern day would consider soft drinks.

Homer describes an eigth-century BC version of barley water in The Iliad, listing barley meal, wine and cheese as the main ingriedients. In The Classical Cookbook Sally Grainger interprets this as a type of soup or porridge. Hesychius, writing probably in the fifth-century AD, records its evolution into a drink. THis recipe leans on the extensive researches in the early 1930s of Ernst Darmstaedter into barley and its culinary uses in ancient times to produce a Roman equivalent of barley water.

*A good web link to read on Kykeon : https://passtheflamingo.com/2018/01/30/
ancient-recipe-ptisane-barley-water-greek-at-least-5th-century-bce/

Original recipe:

Translation:“[Barley] Groats belong to the wheat family.* They have juice that is quite nour-ishing and tenacious if, when they have been cooked in water alone, they are taken with honeyed wine,* or with sweet or even astringent wine (the critical time for use is specific for each), and if salt and oil have been stirred in.” ~ Aelius Galenus (Galen), De alimentorum facultatibus (On the Properties of Foodstuffs), early 2nd century CE