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Dessert

Gloucester Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from rice, barley, sago, hartshorn shavings, and eryngo root, sweetened and flavored, served in milk, wine, or broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 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. Let it 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

Hartshorn shavings
Gelling agent that sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Sago
Starch that thickens the liquid and helps it hold its shape.
Rice
Starch that adds body and thickens the simmered liquid.
Pearl barley
Starch that adds body and thickens the simmered liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering down to 1 pint. Reducing the liquid concentrates the dissolved starches and gelling agent. Too much water leaves a weak mixture that may not set firmly once cooled.

“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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