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Composition of Iceland Moss

A decoction made from Iceland moss, boiled with water or milk and flavored with sugar, lemon, wine, or spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,289 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Composition of Iceland Moss

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the moss

  1. Soak the Iceland moss in a solution of sub-carbonate of potash and lime for 10 to 14 days to remove bitterness.

Make the decoction

  1. Boil the prepared moss in water or milk.

  2. For a concentrated decoction, boil down the moss until it gelatinizes on cooling.

  3. Flavor with sugar, lemon, wine, or spices as desired.

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. Lime + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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

Iceland moss
Provides the gelling carbohydrate that thickens the decoction as it cools.
Sub-carbonate of potash
Alkaline soak that helps dissolve the bitter compounds in the moss.
Lime
Works with the potash in the soaking solution to help remove bitterness from the moss.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the remaining flavour of the decoction.

The step that matters

Soaking the moss for 10 to 14 days. The soak must be long enough for the alkaline solution to draw out bitterness. Too short a soak leaves the moss bitter, and the final decoction cannot be fixed by flavouring alone.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Limethe original

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