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Mint Jelly

Mint jelly made with gelatin, mint, lemon juice, and sugar, served cold with lamb.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Mint Jelly

Why it works: Mint and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,998 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mint Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 5 minutes.

  2. Wash and dry the mint, then let it steep in boiling water for 30 minutes.

Make the jelly

  1. Add the sugar to the gelatine and pour the mint water over it, stirring until dissolved.

  2. Strain the mixture, then add the lemon juice when cool.

  3. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until firm.

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. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mint flavour and sharpens the sweetness.
Mint
Gives the jelly its main aroma and flavour as it steeps in the hot water.

The step that matters

Add the lemon juice when cool. Gelatine sets best when the liquid is no longer very hot. Adding acidic lemon juice to a very hot mixture can weaken setting and dull the fresh flavour, so let the strained liquid cool first.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar. 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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