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Marbled Jelly

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 280 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Marbled Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare different jellies and blancmange in various colors: yellow with saffron or turmeric, green with spinach juice, pink with cochineal or beetroot juice, and white with milk or cream.

  2. In a mold, place bits of the various jellies broken into pieces.

  3. Pour just liquid jelly over the pieces to create veins, ensuring it is not too warm to avoid melting the pieces.

  4. Cool the jelly quickly, then add more broken jelly pieces and repeat the process until the mold is full.

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. Spinach + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together280 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Saffron + turmerictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Saffron + spinachtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Turmeric + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together294 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Saffron + beetroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the turmeric

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, saffron, egg, spinach, beetroot, milk):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Turmericthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, saffron, egg, spinach, beetroot, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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