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Dessert

White Jelly

A gelatin dessert made from sweet milk, gelatine, sugar, vanilla, sherry, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and rum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 146 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

White Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a water bath, bring 1 pint of sweet milk to a boil.

  2. Soak 1 ounce of Cox's gelatine in 1 coffee cup of water for 1 hour.

  3. Once the milk is scalding hot, add the soaked gelatine and stir until dissolved.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of sugar and flavor with vanilla, sherry, or a mix of sherry and rum.

  5. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it set.

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. Sherry + rumtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + rumtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together728 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 milk mixture into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sweet milk
Forms the body of the jelly and carries the creamy flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the milk.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine in hot milk. Gelatine must be fully dissolved into the hot milk, not boiled, so it sets evenly. Milk that is too hot or stirred poorly can leave lumps or weak patches in the set jelly.

“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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