Skip to main content
Dessert

Potato Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from potato starch, water, salt, sugar, lemon juice, wine, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Potato Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the potato starch smooth in a little cold water.

Make the jelly

  1. Pour in boiling water until nearly the consistency of jelly.

  2. Boil for a few minutes.

  3. Add salt, sugar, lemon juice, wine, and nutmeg to taste.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Potato + winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Potato starch
Thickens the liquid and sets into a jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tart and savoury flavours.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour.
Wine
Adds aroma and depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Mix the potato starch smooth in cold water first. Starch granules disperse evenly only in cold liquid. If they are added to hot water unmixed, they clump, and the jelly ends up lumpy instead of smooth.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, wine, nutmeg):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, wine, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes