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Dessert

Jujube Paste

A sweet, thickened paste made with sugar, gum arabic, water, lemon essence, and cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Jujube Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Combine sugar, gum arabic, and water in a bowl.

  2. Flavor with essence of lemon and cochineal.

  3. Let the mixture sit in a warm place until the gum is dissolved.

  4. Cook the mixture until thick, testing in cold water; it should bend when cold.

Shape and set

  1. Pour into buttered pans, about ⅛ inch thick.

  2. Once cool, roll up into a scroll.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, once cooked, the body that sets the paste firm.
Gum arabic
Acts as a binder that thickens the mixture and gives the paste its chewy texture.
Water
Dissolves the sugar and gum so they can be cooked into a smooth mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking until thick and testing in cold water. Sugar syrup thickens as water evaporates and its concentration rises. Undercooking leaves the paste too soft to hold a shape, while overcooking makes it brittle. Testing a spoonful in cold water shows when it has reached the bendable stage.

“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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