Skip to main content
Dessert

Potato-jelly

A sweet, spiced jelly made from potato flour and boiling water, flavored with sugar, nutmeg, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,052 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato-jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. In a bowl, place 1 cup of potato flour.

  2. Pour boiling water over the flour, ensuring the water is absolutely boiling.

  3. Stir until the mixture transforms into a jelly.

Flavour and serve

  1. Add sugar, nutmeg, and white wine to taste.

  2. Serve warm.

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. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Potato flour
Starch that thickens with hot water to form the jelly's body.
Boiling water
Hydrates and gelatinises the potato starch so the mixture sets into a jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the jelly's flavour.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the flavour.

The step that matters

Pour boiling water over the flour. Potato starch needs near-boiling water to swell and gelatinise. Water that is not hot enough leaves the starch grainy and unable to set into a smooth jelly.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, nutmeg, white wine):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, nutmeg, white wine. 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.

You might also like

Deep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes