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Dessert

Bread Jelly

Bread jelly is a jelly made from soaked bread pulp, boiled with water and sugar, then cooled to set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Bread Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the bread jelly

  1. Soak the bread in water for 8 hours, then squeeze out all the water.

  2. Boil the pulp in 1 pint of fresh water for 1.5 hours to break down starch.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve; it will form a smooth jelly when cold.

Serve

  1. For children, mix the jelly with enough warm water to achieve a thin cream consistency, adding sugar to taste.

  2. For a more nutritious option, combine 3 ounces of bread jelly with 4 ounces of milk and 4 ounces of water.

  3. Add raw-meat juice and cream for additional protein and fat if 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Milk + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides the starch and body that become the smooth, set jelly once boiled and sieved.
Milk
Adds fat and protein, giving the thinned jelly a richer, creamier texture.
Cream
Adds fat, making the drink richer and smoother in texture.

The step that matters

Boil the pulp for 1.5 hours. Long boiling breaks down the bread's starch so it can thicken into a smooth jelly when cooled. Undercooked starch leaves the mixture grainy and less able to set.

“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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