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Tapioca Jelly

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,289 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tapioca Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the tapioca in cold water two or three times.

  2. Soak the tapioca in fresh water for five to six hours, adding a little lime peel.

  3. Simmer the soaked tapioca in the same water until it becomes clear.

  4. Add lemon juice, wine, and sugar to the mixture.

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. Lime + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lime + winetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together438 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lime + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,332 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Swap the lime

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, wine, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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