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Dessert

Arrack, or Rum Jelly

A clear jelly made with lemon zest, syrup, lemon juice, rum, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and rum work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 367 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Arrack, or Rum Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Flavour the syrup

  1. Rub the peel of two lemons on a large lump of sugar.

  2. Scrape the zest into a half pint of syrup.

Add the juice and rum

  1. Express the juice of five lemons and strain it.

  2. Add the strained juice to the syrup along with ⅓ cup of rum.

  3. Ensure the syrup is lukewarm.

Set the jelly

  1. Add 1 ounce of prepared isinglass.

  2. Ice the mixture as usual.

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. Syrup + rumtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together367 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + rumtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Zest supplies aromatic oils and the juice adds bright acidity to the sweet syrup.
Syrup
Provides the sweet liquid base that gives the jelly its body.
Rum
Adds aroma and warm flavour to the jelly.
Isinglass
A gelling agent that sets the liquid into a firm jelly.

The step that matters

Ensure the syrup is lukewarm before adding the isinglass. Isinglass is a gelatin-like gelling agent that must dissolve evenly and set properly. If the syrup is too hot, its setting power can weaken, and if it is too cold, the isinglass may not disperse smoothly through the liquid.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, rum):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, rum. 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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