I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Many years ago, when I was just beginning to work with period recipes, I received a copy of Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book and, if memory serves, one of my first attempts at medieval/renaissance/early-modern cookery was her barley cream. The book is dated to the early seventeenth century, and has some measurements included, which is not the case with earlier works, thus it was a fairly gentle introduction to working with early cookery materials. I have fond memories of that first step into a world which has occupied much of my time for the last twenty-five years or so.

What follows is not that recipe. Rather it is a recipe loosely inspired by my memory of that recipe. And by the fact that I had a banana which wasn't getting any younger.

• 1/2 cup barley
• 3/4 cup milk
• splash of sherry
• 4 tsp sugar, or more to taste
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 banana
• icing/confectioners sugar

Add the sherry and sugar to the barley and milk and mix well. Bring it o a simmer, cover and simmer gently for at least half an hour, until the barley is done to your liking. Keep an eye on it, though, as you might need to add a bit more liquid.

Lightly beat the egg yolks and either: temper them with some of the barley mix before adding them, mix a little milk in with before carefully adding them, or work without a net and simply add them very carefully. What I actually did was to add a bit of milk to the hot barley mixture, which dropped the temperature a bit, then added my egg yolks. In any case, bring the mix back up to just a bare simmer, stirring regularly. You are making a custard in and around the barley. At some point, the mix will begin to thicken and sort of coat the back of a spoon, as in the horrible picture. At that point, remove it from the heat.

You could, if you like, eat it right now. Warm, delicious custard! If you'd like to go the extra mile, however, you can spoon it into ramekins or dessert glasses and let it cool before garnishing and serving. Another option is to very lightly butter a bowl or mold, put it in that and let it cool before turning it out to garnish and serve. This last is what I did.

Once I had it turned out, I gently evened up the shape, since it doesn't set hard, then sliced a banana to arrange around the edge. A light sprinkle of sugar finished it off.