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Dessert

Arrowroot Wine Jelly

A clear jelly made from arrowroot, sugar, salt, and wine or brandy, thickened in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and brandy work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 141 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Arrowroot Wine Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the arrowroot with a little cold water to form a paste.

  2. Add the paste to the boiling water and stir well.

  3. Stir in the sugar, salt, and brandy or wine.

  4. Cook for a few minutes until thickened, then remove from heat.

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. Arrowroot + brandytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together141 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid into a clear, smooth jelly as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the wine.
Brandy or wine
Provides the main flavour of the jelly.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot paste to the boiling water. Arrowroot must be fully mixed into a smooth paste with cold water first, otherwise it clumps when it hits hot liquid. Stirring well while adding it keeps the starch dispersed so it thickens evenly.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Beetrootfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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