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Dessert

Gloucester Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from water, hartshorn shavings, isinglass, ivory shavings, barley, rice, cinnamon, lemon peel, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and rice 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

  1. Boil 2 quarts of water with hartshorn shavings, isinglass, ivory shavings, barley, and rice until reduced to 1 quart.

  2. Dissolve a few tablespoons of the jelly in a little milk.

  3. Add a bit of cinnamon, lemon peel, and sugar to taste.

  4. Serve warm or cold.

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. Barley + ricetop 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. Cinnamon + lemontop 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. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Isinglass
Gelatin-like protein that sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Hartshorn shavings
Ammonia-yielding gelling agent that helps the broth set into a jelly.
Barley
Starch and body that thicken the boiled liquid as it reduces.
Rice
Starch that adds body and helps thicken the reduced liquid.

The step that matters

Reducing the boiled liquid to 1 quart. The liquid must reduce enough to concentrate the gelling agents and starches. If it is under-reduced, the jelly will be too soft to set; if over-reduced, it may become too stiff.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, rice, cinnamon, 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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