Skip to main content
Dessert

Gloucester Jelly

A jelly made from rice, sago, pearl barley, Irish moss, eringo-root, and water, optionally sweetened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice, sago, and pearl barley in warm water.

  2. Add the Irish Moss and eringo-root to the washed ingredients.

Cook and set

  1. Simmer the mixture with 3 pints of water until reduced to 1 pint.

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

Serve

  1. Add a little sugar if desired before serving.

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. Barley + irish mosstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Rice + irish mosstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

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

  5. Irish moss + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together107 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Irish moss
Seaweed that contains gelling compounds, helping the liquid set into a jelly as it cools.
Eringo-root
Adds body and thickness to the liquid, supporting the jelly texture as it reduces.
Sago
Starch that thickens the liquid as it cooks and gives the jelly a softer body.
Pearl barley
Starch that thickens the liquid during simmering, adding body to the jelly.
Rice
Starch that thickens the liquid during simmering, adding body to the jelly.

The step that matters

Simmering down to 1 pint. Reducing the liquid concentrates the starches and gelling compounds. If it is reduced too little, the jelly may stay loose; too much may make it stiff.

“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

Irish Moss Blanc MangerIrish Moss Blanc Manger27 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipesRice CreamRice Cream43 recipesRice JellyRice Jelly42 recipes