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Dessert

Arrow-root Jelly

A sweet gelatinous dessert made with arrowroot, water, sherry or brandy, sugar, nutmeg, and optional lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon 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 ↓

Arrow-root Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine 1 pint of water, ⅓ cup of sherry (or 1 tablespoon of brandy), sugar, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Bring the mixture to a quick boil.

  3. In a bowl, mix 1 tablespoon of arrow-root with 2 tablespoons of cold water until smooth.

  4. Gradually stir the arrow-root mixture into the boiling liquid.

  5. Boil for 3 minutes, then remove from heat.

  6. If desired, add lemon juice before serving.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Sherry + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,246 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  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

Arrow-root
Starch that thickens the liquid into a clear, soft jelly as it heats.
Sherry
Adds flavour and a little acidity and aroma to the jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the flavour of the liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring the arrow-root into the boiling liquid. Arrow-root must be fully smooth in cold water first and added gradually while the liquid boils, so the starch disperses evenly instead of forming lumps. Starch thickens as it heats, so the mixture should be kept boiling while it is stirred in.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, sugar, 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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