Skip to main content
Main

Gloucester Jelly

A gelatinous dish made from rice, barley, sago, hartshorn shavings, eryngo root, and water, sweetened and flavored.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and barley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 568 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Gloucester Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Combine rice, pearl barley, sago, hartshorn shavings, and sliced eryngo root in a pot.

  2. Add 3 pints of water and simmer until reduced to 1 pint.

  3. Sweeten and flavor to your taste.

  4. Allow to cool.

  5. Cut into pieces.

Serve

  1. Serve dissolved in milk, wine, or broth.

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. Rice + barleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together568 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch thickens the liquid as it simmers, helping it set into a jelly.
Pearl barley
Its starch adds body and thickening to the simmered liquid.
Sago
Its starch gelatinises in hot water, adding thickness that helps the jelly set.
Hartshorn shavings
Ammonium carbonate-rich shavings that help the liquid gel as it cools.
Eryngo root
Adds aromatic flavour to the simmered liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer until reduced to 1 pint. The liquid must reduce to the stated volume so that the starches and gelling agents are concentrated enough to set firmly when cooled. Too much water leaves a loose jelly that will not hold its shape when cut.

“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

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipesRice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipes