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Arrow-Root Jellj

A clear, smooth jelly made from arrowroot powder, water, and optional sweeteners or flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and caraway share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Arrow-Root Jellj

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. In a bowl, mix the arrowroot powder with enough cold water to form a paste.

  2. Pour the paste into ½ pint of boiling water, stirring briskly.

  3. Boil for a few minutes until it becomes a clear, smooth jelly.

Flavour and serve

  1. For adults, add a little sugar and sherry wine if desired.

  2. For infants, use a drop or two of essence of caraway seeds or cinnamon instead of wine.

  3. You can substitute fresh milk for the water if preferred.

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. Arrowroot + carawaytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sherry + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Arrowroot + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together129 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Arrowroot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

Arrowroot powder
Starch that thickens the liquid into a clear, smooth jelly when boiled.

The step that matters

Pour the paste into boiling water while stirring briskly. Arrowroot starch must be dispersed evenly in hot liquid; if it is added without vigorous stirring it can clump, and the starch needs to boil to thicken and turn clear.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against arrowroot, sugar, sherry, wine, 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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