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Jellied Vegetables

A gelatinous dish of boiled vegetables set in a sweet and sour gelatine base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 629 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Jellied Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water and dissolve it in boiling water.

  2. Add the sugar, vinegar, lemon juice, and salt to the dissolved gelatine.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it cool until it begins to thicken.

Set the jelly

  1. Fold in the cold vegetables: beets, cabbage, peas, and cucumber.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold and chill thoroughly.

Serve

  1. To serve, remove from the mold and arrange around thin slices of cold, cooked meat, preferably roast lamb.

  2. Top with mayonnaise and garnish with watercress.

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. Peas + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Cabbage + cucumbertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together722 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Peas + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,005 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly that holds the vegetables in place.
Beets
Add colour and a mild earthy sweetness to the jelly.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture and body to the set jelly.
Cucumber
Adds cool, crisp texture and fresh flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the sharpness of the vinegar and lemon juice.

The step that matters

Let the gelatine mixture cool until it just begins to thicken before folding in the vegetables. Gelatine sets as it cools. If the mixture is still very hot, cold vegetables will warm it and the jelly may set slowly or unevenly; if it has already set firmly, the vegetables will not distribute evenly through it.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, sugar, cucumber, vinegar, lemon. 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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