Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Iceland Moss
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the moss
Wash the Iceland moss well in cold water.
Soak the moss in a basin of cold water overnight.
After soaking, squeeze the moss dry in a cloth.
Make the jelly
Put the moss in a saucepan with 1 quart of cold water.
Boil for 1 hour, stirring frequently.
Strain through a sieve into a basin and sweeten with loaf sugar to taste.
For Milk Jelly, boil the moss in 1 quart of milk instead of water for 2 hours, then strain and sweeten.
When cold, turn the jelly out onto a dish and serve.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar 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
- Iceland moss
- Its natural gums thicken the liquid as it boils and then set into a jelly on cooling.
The step that matters
Boil the moss until it has released its gum. Iceland moss must simmer long enough for its gums to dissolve into the liquid; too little boiling leaves it thin, and it only sets properly once the strained liquid cools.
“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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