Name: Carageen or Irish Moss Jelly
Ingredients: Irish moss; water; sugar; bitter orange peel; hartshorn shavings

Why it works: Irish moss and sugar work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 107 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Carageen or Irish Moss Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the Irish moss in water until soft.
Boil the soaked moss in fresh water until it dissolves.
Strain the mixture to remove any solids.
Add sugar to taste, along with a few chips of bitter orange peel and a small quantity of hartshorn shavings.
Stir well and pour into a mold to set.

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.

Irish moss + sugartop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together107 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar + bitter orangetop 41% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together14 recipes
Irish moss + bitter orangetop 45% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1 recipe

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).