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Dessert

Carrageen, or Irish Moss

A sweet, lemon-flavored jelly made from carrageen and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Carrageen, or Irish Moss

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the carrageen in two or three waters and drain.

Make the jelly

  1. Pour boiling water over the carrageen and let it simmer until it becomes a pulp.

  2. Strain the mixture, sweeten to taste, and add the juice of two lemons.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Carrageen
Seaweed compounds that dissolve in hot water and set into a jelly as the liquid cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Lemons
Juice adds acidity and a bright flavour that cuts the seaweed taste.

The step that matters

Simmer until the carrageen becomes a pulp. Carrageen releases its gelling compounds only after sustained heat dissolves it. If it is not simmered long enough, the strained liquid may stay thin and fail to set when cold.

“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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