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Dessert

Bread Jelly

Bread jelly is made by boiling stale bread in water, sieving, sweetening, cooling, and serving with cream and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Bread Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pulp

  1. Boil the stale bread in enough boiling water to cover it until it becomes a pulp.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Sweeten and flavor to taste.

Set and serve

  1. Cool the mixture in a cup or mold.

  2. Serve with cream and powdered sugar.

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

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

  2. Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Its starch breaks down in boiling water and thickens into a soft, jelly-like body as it cools.
Boiling water
Softens the bread into a pulp and supplies the moisture that gives the jelly its wobble.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the mild, plain flavor of the bread.
Cream
Adds fat and richness that contrasts with the light, lean jelly when served alongside.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture in a cup or mold. The starch in the bread thickens as it cools, so the jelly only sets properly once the mixture has cooled fully in its container.

“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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