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Dessert

Arrow Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from arrowroot, water, and optional spices and sweeteners.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Arrow Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil 1 pint of water with a few bits of cinnamon or lemon rind.

  2. Dissolve 2 tablespoons of arrowroot in a little water and stir it into the boiling water, then boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture, then season with salt, sugar, wine, and nutmeg as 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Arrowroot + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Arrowroot + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Arrowroot
Thickens the water into a clear, gel-like jelly as its starch swells when heated.

The step that matters

Dissolve the arrowroot in cold water first. Arrowroot starch clumps if it hits hot liquid dry. Mixing it into a little cold water first lets it disperse evenly, so it thickens smoothly when stirred into the boiling water.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Arrowrootthe original
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Shallotfits less well
  4. Parsnipfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, lemon, sugar, wine, nutmeg. 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.

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