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Dessert

Gloucester Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from rice, sago, pearl barley, hartshorn shavings, eringo-root, and water, sweetened with sugar and flavored with nutmeg and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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. Simmer rice, sago, pearl barley, hartshorn shavings, and eringo-root in 3 pints of water until thickened.

  2. Strain the mixture and let it cool to form a jelly.

Serve

  1. To serve, dissolve the jelly in wine, milk, or broth.

  2. For a quick version, heat water with white wine, sugar, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  3. Add bread crumbs when boiling and let it cook until thick enough to drink.

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).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Barley + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  5. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells and softens during simmering.
Sago
Adds starch that thickens the liquid into a jelly as it cooks.
Pearl-barley
Adds starch and body, helping the liquid thicken as it simmers.
Hartshorn shavings
Gelling agent that sets the strained liquid into a jelly as it cools.
Eringo-root
Adds body and flavour to the liquid as it simmers and thickens.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture and let it cool to form a jelly. The jelly only sets if the thickened liquid is strained clear of solids and given time to cool. Starches and hartshorn gel as they cool, so pouring it out too early gives a runny result.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, barley, white wine, sugar, nutmeg, bread):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Raisinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, barley, white wine, sugar, nutmeg, bread. 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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