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Dessert

Arrowroot Wine Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from arrowroot, water, sugar, and wine, served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and brandy work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 141 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Arrowroot Wine Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Wet the arrowroot with a little cold water.

  2. Stir the arrowroot into the boiling water with dissolved sugar.

  3. Boil for ten minutes while stirring.

  4. Add brandy or sherry.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until cold.

  2. Serve with custard as a sauce, if desired.

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. Arrowroot + brandytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together141 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid into a clear, glossy jelly when boiled and then cooled.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the wine.
Brandy or sherry
Adds aroma and flavor to the jelly.

The step that matters

Boil for ten minutes while stirring. Arrowroot must be fully heated and stirred so its starch granules swell and thicken evenly. Stopping early or leaving it unstirred can leave lumps or a weak set.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Arrowrootthe original
  3. Beetrootfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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