Skip to main content
Dessert

Rose and Lemon Jubes

A sweet gelatin candy flavored with rose and lemon.

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

Why it works: Sugar and gelatin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Rose and Lemon Jubes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Combine 8 lbs sugar, 4 lbs glucose, and 3 pints water in a large pot and boil until ready.

  2. Soak 2 lbs gelatin in water.

  3. Stir the gelatin into the boiling mixture until dissolved.

  4. Add 3 to 4 oz powdered tartaric acid and mix well.

Flavor and set

  1. Divide the mixture in half.

  2. Flavor one half with rose flavoring and color it pink.

  3. Flavor the other half with lemon essence.

  4. Pour both mixtures into square tins.

  5. Let them set.

Cut and finish

  1. Once set, cut into cubes.

  2. Mix the two colors together to crystallize.

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 + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Rose + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Gelatin + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides the bulk of the sweet, solid body of the jubes.
Glucose
Interferes with sugar crystals, keeping the jubes smooth and tender rather than grainy.
Gelatin
Forms the gel network that lets the jubes set firm and springy.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavor.

The step that matters

Fully dissolving the gelatin. Gelatin must melt completely into the hot syrup before setting. Undissolved granules leave specks and weak patches, so the jubes may not set evenly or hold their shape.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, gelatin, rose):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, gelatin, rose. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes