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Dessert

London Jelly Fruit Bar

A jelly fruit bar made with Japanese gum, sugar, glucose, citric acid, assorted fruits, nuts, and citrus peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

London Jelly Fruit Bar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gum

  1. Soak the Japanese gum in 1 quart of cold water overnight.

  2. Pour the soaked gum into a kettle and bring it to a boil.

  3. Strain the boiled gum into a clean kettle.

Make the jelly

  1. Add the sugar and glucose, and cook until it reaches a jelly or good thread consistency.

  2. Remove from heat.

  3. Color with delicate pink or yellow.

  4. Add lemon or strawberry flavor.

  5. Add a little citric acid solution to enhance the flavor.

  6. Let the mixture set while you prepare a paper-lined slab.

Assemble and cut

  1. Sprinkle assorted French fruits, walnuts, almonds, and pecans on the slab, spaced about 4 inches apart.

  2. Pour the jelly mixture evenly and slowly over the fruits and nuts.

  3. Decorate the top with thin strips of lemon and orange peel.

  4. Cut into ten-cent bars.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Walnut + pecanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Almond + pecanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Japanese gum
Gelling agent that gives the jelly its firm, chewy set.
Sugar
Sweetness and body, and helps the jelly set firm when cooked.
Glucose
Prevents sugar from crystallizing, keeping the jelly smooth and clear.
Citric acid solution
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavor and balances sweetness.
Assorted french fruits
Provide flavor, color and pieces suspended within the jelly.

The step that matters

Cook to jelly or thread consistency. Undercooking leaves the jelly too soft to set, while overcooking makes it hard and brittle. Sugar concentration controls the final texture, so the cook must stop at the right point.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Brazil nutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, walnut, almond, lemon, orange. 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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