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Dessert

Mint Jelly

Mint jelly made by boiling mint leaves, sweetening with sugar, adding vinegar, salt, paprika, and gelatin, then cooling and serving with lamb.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Mint Jelly

Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Mint Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Wash the mint leaves and boil them in 2 cups of water.

  2. Once the flavor is extracted, add 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of vinegar, ¼ teaspoon of salt, and a dash of paprika.

  3. Dissolve ¼ package of gelatine in cold water and add it to the mixture.

  4. Strain the mixture and pour it into a mold.

Set and serve

  1. Let it stand to harden and serve with lamb.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Mint + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mint + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mint leaves
Infused into the boiling water to give the jelly its main flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sugar.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully before adding it. Gelatine must be completely dissolved in liquid before it is stirred into the hot mixture; undissolved granules leave gritty spots and set unevenly.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar. 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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