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Dessert

Potato Jelly

A jelly made from grated potatoes, water, salt, sugar, lemon juice or wine, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 the potato

  1. Peel and wash the potatoes, then grate them into a bowl.

  2. Pour ½ pint of water over the grated potatoes and strain through a fine sieve.

  3. Let the mixture settle for a few minutes, then drain off the water and add more water.

  4. Once settled, pour off the last water and add one more spoonful of water, stirring with the grated potato.

Make the jelly

  1. Bring some water to a boil and gradually pour in the potato mixture while stirring continuously.

  2. Cook until it reaches a jelly‑like consistency, then boil for a few more minutes.

  3. Add salt to taste, sweeten with loaf sugar, and flavor with lemon juice or wine and a little nutmeg.

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

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

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

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

Potatoes
Grated potato releases starch, which thickens the water into a jelly as it cooks.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the savory potato base.
Lemon juice or wine
Adds acidity and brightness that lift the flavour of the jelly.

The step that matters

Cooking the potato mixture to a jelly. Starch from the grated potato must be stirred in continuously while the water boils, or it can clump and scorch. Boiling until the starch thickens gives the jelly its set; stopping too early leaves it runny.

Swap the potato

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

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

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

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