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Dessert

Peptonised Milk Jelly

A gelatin dessert made from peptonised milk, sugar, citrus rinds, and rum or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Peptonised Milk Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water until needed.

Make the milk mixture

  1. Dissolve sugar in hot peptonised milk.

  2. Add the soaked gelatine and stir until dissolved.

  3. Pare the lemon and orange, adding the rinds to the milk.

Add the juices and set

  1. Squeeze the lemon and orange juice into a glass and strain the juice.

  2. Mix the strained juice with rum or brandy.

  3. Stir the juices and spirits into the milk mixture.

  4. Strain through a colander.

  5. Cool until syrupy.

  6. Pour into tumblers or jelly moulds when nearly cool.

  7. Refrigerate.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Milk + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a jelly as it cools.
Peptonised milk
Forms the creamy base of the jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the citrus.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fresh citrus flavour.
Orange
Adds sweetness and fruity aroma from juice and rind.
Rum or brandy
Adds aroma and warmth to the finished jelly.

The step that matters

Cool until syrupy before pouring. Gelatine begins to set as the mixture cools, so it should be syrupy but still pourable. If it is too cold or too thick, the jelly may set unevenly, with lumps or layers, in the moulds.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, orange, rum):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, orange, rum. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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