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Dessert

Cranberry and Rice Jelly

A jelly made by boiling cranberries, thickening with ground rice, sweetening, setting, and serving with milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cranberry and Rice Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Boil and press the cranberries to extract the juice.

  2. Gradually mix in the ground rice until it thickens to a jelly.

  3. Boil gently while stirring.

  4. Sweeten to your taste.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a basin or mold.

  2. Let it set.

  3. Serve with milk or cream.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Cranberry + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together37 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Cranberry + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cranberry + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Cranberry juice
Forms the liquid base and supplies the tart flavour of the jelly.
Ground rice
Its starch thickens the hot juice and sets into a jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharp flavour of the cranberries.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the ground rice. Starch clumps when it hits hot liquid all at once. Adding it slowly while stirring separates the grains so they thicken the juice evenly into a smooth jelly.

Swap the cranberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Cranberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar, milk. 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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