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Dessert

Gloucester Jelly

A stiff jelly made from rice, sago, barley, Eringo root, and hartshorn shavings simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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, barley, Eringo root, and hartshorn shavings in 3 pints of water until reduced to 1 pint.

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

Serve

  1. To serve, dissolve a spoonful of jelly in warm liquid like tea, coffee, milk, or broth.

  2. Alternatively, mix with an equal quantity of wine and add sugar, spice, or lemon juice.

  3. For added flavor, boil a brown crust of bread and a little cinnamon with the jelly.

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. Rice + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Barley + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Rice
Thickens the liquid and adds body as its starch breaks down during simmering.
Sago
Its starch thickens the liquid so it sets into a stiff jelly when cooled.
Pearl barley
Its starch adds thickness and body to the simmered liquid, helping it set.
Hartshorn shavings
Gelatin-rich material that helps the liquid set firmly as it cools.

The step that matters

Reducing the simmered mixture to 1 pint. The liquid must reduce enough for the starches and gelling agents to be concentrated; too much water leaves the jelly too weak to set stiffly when cooled.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, barley, sugar, wine, bread, cinnamon):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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