Skip to main content
Dessert

Arrow Root Jelly

A clear lemon-flavored jelly made with arrowroot, water, lemon, and a pinch of salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Arrow Root Jelly

Why it works: Lemon and arrowroot 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 ↓

Arrow Root Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the lemon and add it to the water.

  2. Heat the water until it scalds.

  3. Strain the hot water.

  4. Mix the arrowroot with a little cold water to form a paste.

Thicken and cook

  1. Stir the arrowroot paste into the hot water.

  2. Add a pinch of salt.

  3. Let the mixture boil for five minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Starch that thickens the liquid into a clear, glossy jelly as it heats.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma to the water as it steeps.

The step that matters

Stir the arrowroot paste into the hot water. Arrowroot must be mixed into a smooth paste with cold water first, otherwise it clumps when added to hot liquid. Starch granules swell and thicken only when heated, so the mixture needs to boil to set properly.

“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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes