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Dessert

Arrowroot Jelly

A clear jelly made from arrowroot, sugar, water, and lemon extract, served with cream, sugar, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Arrowroot Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Combine ½ pint cold water and 2 teaspoons sugar in a porcelain saucepan.

  2. Mix 1 tablespoon arrowroot with 2 tablespoons cold water, then stir into the saucepan.

  3. Stir constantly and boil for 3 minutes once it starts boiling.

  4. Stir in ½ teaspoon lemon extract.

Mold and serve

  1. Dip molds in cold water before filling them with the mixture.

  2. Serve with cream and sugar, and wine 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 + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

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

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

Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid into a clear, smooth jelly as it heats and gels.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances its mild flavour.
Cold water
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens.

The step that matters

Stir constantly and boil for 3 minutes once it starts boiling. Arrowroot must be stirred as it heats so it does not clump, and it needs to reach a boil to thicken fully. Stopping the stirring or boiling too little can leave the jelly thin or lumpy.

“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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