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Dessert

Jujube Paste

A sweet, thick paste made from sugar, gum arabic, water, lemon essence, and cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Jujube Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the paste

  1. In a warm place, combine sugar, gum arabic, and water. Let it stand until the gum is dissolved.

  2. Cook the mixture on low heat until thick, testing in cold water; it should be limber and bend when cold.

Set and shape

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered pans, about ⅛ inch thick.

  2. Once cool, roll the jujube paste into a scroll.

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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, as it cooks down, the body that holds the paste together.
Gum arabic
Binds the syrup and helps it set into a flexible, bendable sheet.

The step that matters

Cook until thick and test in cold water. Cooking drives off water and concentrates the sugar. Stopping too early leaves the paste sticky and soft, while cooking too long makes it stiff and brittle, so the cold-water test checks that it bends without cracking.

“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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