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Arrowroot Jelly

A clear lime-flavored jelly made with arrowroot, bitter almonds, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Arrowroot Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Steep the lime peel in hot water with the pounded almonds.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Combine the strained mixture with arrowroot, lime juice, brandy, and sugar. Add clear water.

  4. Heat the mixture, stirring until it thickens.

  5. Pour into a mold or jelly glasses and let set.

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. Almond + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lime + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lime + almondtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together258 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Almond + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 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

Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid into a clear, smooth jelly when heated with stirring.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly to taste.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture, stirring until it thickens. Arrowroot thickens when heated, but if it is not stirred constantly it can clump or scorch on the bottom of the pan, leaving lumps and an uneven set.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, arrowroot, brandy, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, arrowroot, brandy, 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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