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Dessert

Mint Jelly

Mint Jelly is a gelatin dessert made with mint leaves, lemon juice, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Mint Jelly

Why it works: Lemon and mint 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 the mint

  1. Wash, dry, and remove leaves from the stalk; chop the leaves and add them to the boiling water.

  2. Let the mixture come to a boil, then strain it.

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 20 minutes.

  2. Pour the boiling water into the soaked gelatine.

  3. Add sugar, lemon juice, and spinach juice to color it green.

  4. Stir occasionally until the gelatine is dissolved.

Mold and set

  1. Rinse molds in cold water, then pour in the jelly mixture.

  2. Place in a cold area to stiffen.

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. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

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

  3. Mint + spinachtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together290 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 + minttop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly its body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mint flavor and balances the sweetness.
Mint leaves
Provide the main aroma and flavor through steeping in boiling water.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine fully. Gelatine must dissolve completely in the hot liquid before it cools; undissolved granules leave gritty spots and weak, uneven setting.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Kalefits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, mint. 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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