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Dessert

Red Pepper Jell

A preserved mixture of red peppers, lemons, ginger, peaches, sugar, and vinegar boiled and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Red Pepper Jell

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the peppers lengthwise and remove the seeds.

  2. Cut the peppers crosswise until very fine.

  3. Slice the lemons and combine with the peppers, ginger, peaches, and vinegar in a pot.

Cook

  1. Boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Add the sugar and boil until thick.

Bottle

  1. Remove the ginger and lemons, then bottle 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  3. Ginger + peachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Lemon + peachtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Red peppers
Provide the bulk, colour and sweet-hot flavour of the jelly.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, when boiled thick, helps it set and keep.
Lemons
Add acidity that helps the jelly set and brightens the flavour.
Vinegar
Adds tang and acidity that balances the sugar and helps preserve the jelly.
Peaches
Add fruit body and mellow sweetness to the jelly.
Ginger roots
Add a warm, aromatic note to the jelly.

The step that matters

Boil until thick after adding the sugar. Sugar and acid must be concentrated by boiling until the mixture reaches its setting point. Stopping too early leaves a runny jelly, while boiling too long can make it stiff and dull in flavour.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon, ginger, sugar, vinegar. 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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