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Dessert

Irish Moss

A sweet pudding made by thickening milk with Irish moss, sweetened and flavored, served with cream and optional jelly.

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 ↓

Irish Moss

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the moss

  1. Soak the Irish moss in strong soda water until it swells.

  2. Squeeze the moss to remove excess water.

Make the pudding

  1. Place the moss in a large bowl with 6 pints of sweet milk.

  2. Set the bowl in a pot of hot water and stir occasionally.

  3. Let it sit until it slightly jells when dropped on a cold plate.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve, then sweeten and flavor to taste.

  5. Rinse a mold or crock with tepid water and pour in the mixture.

  6. Allow it to cool for a few hours until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream and sugar, and add jelly 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Irish moss + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Irish moss + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together107 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Irish moss
Seaweed that thickens the milk and helps it set into a soft jelly as it cools.
Sweet milk
Forms the body of the pudding and sets with the moss into a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Letting it slightly jell on a cold plate. Irish moss needs gentle heat and time to release its gelling compounds. Stopping at the right point, when a drop wrinkles on a cold plate, gives a set that is firm but still tender. Too little time leaves it runny, and too much makes it stiff.

“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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