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Dessert

Kiselle

A fruit dessert thickened with corn starch and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Kiselle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fruit juice

  1. Stew the fresh fruit and strain off the juice.

  2. Sweeten the juice to taste.

  3. Measure the juice and heat it in a pot.

Thicken and set

  1. For every pint of juice, blend 2 heaping tablespoons of corn-starch with a little cold water.

  2. When the juice boils, stir in the corn-starch mixture.

  3. Continue stirring for about 5 minutes until smooth.

  4. Pour the mixture into rinsed moulds and set in a cold place to harden.

  5. Once firm, turn out and serve with cream and sugar.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  3. Corn + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh fruit
Provides the juice that gives the dessert its flavour and colour.
Corn-starch
Thickens the hot juice as its starch swells, so the mixture sets firm when cooled.
Cream
Adds richness and a soft contrast to the tart fruit when served.

The step that matters

Stirring the corn-starch into the boiling juice. Corn-starch must be fully dissolved in cold water first and added to boiling juice while stirring, so the starch swells evenly. Stirring for about 5 minutes keeps it from lumping and ensures it thickens into a smooth, sliceable set.

“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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