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Dessert

Cranberry and Ground Rice Jelly

A jelly made from cranberry juice, cloves, ground rice, and sugar, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cranberry and clove share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 61 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Cranberry and Ground Rice Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Combine cranberries and cloves in a covered jar.

  2. Place the jar in a saucepan of cold water over moderate heat.

  3. Simmer gently for about 30 minutes to extract the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Mix the juice with ground rice and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Boil gently until the mixture thickens.

  3. Pour into a mold that has been immersed in cold water.

Serve

  1. Once cold, turn out the jelly and serve with cream.

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. Cranberry + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together61 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cranberry + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together37 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Clove + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Cranberry juice
Forms the liquid base and provides the tart flavour the jelly is built on.
Ground rice
Starch that swells and thickens the juice as it heats, giving the jelly its body.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart juice and balances its acidity.
Cloves
Adds a warm, spiced aroma to the juice.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the mixture thickens. Ground rice is a starch that swells and thickens when heated, so the mixture must cook long enough for the starch to fully swell. Stopping too early can leave the jelly thin and unset.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cranberry, rice, sugar, cream. 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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