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Dessert

Ivory Jelly

A gelatin dessert made from ivory dust, water, spices, sherry, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Ivory Jelly

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Combine all ingredients except the sherry and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer gently until the mixture reduces to 1 pint.

  3. Strain through a jelly bag and let cool.

  4. Remove any sediment, then reheat the jelly.

Finish and set

  1. Add the sherry and sugar to taste, and strain into a mold.

  2. Set aside until firm.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Sherry + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Sherry + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Clove and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Ivory dust
Gelatin-rich powder that sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Sherry
Adds flavor and aroma to the finished jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the savory spices and the jelly's flavor.

The step that matters

Strain out the sediment before reheating. Any leftover particles in the cooled jelly will cloud its clarity and can sit as grit in the finished set. Straining through a jelly bag and removing sediment gives a clear, smooth jelly. Sherry and sugar go in after this, so they are not lost in the filtering.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, clove, sugar. 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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