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Dessert

Irish Moss

A sweet pudding made from Irish moss, milk, sugar, melted chocolate, and sweetened cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Irish Moss

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Rinse and soak the Irish moss in cold water for 15 minutes.

  2. Add the moss to 1 quart of milk and cook for 30 minutes.

Mold and serve

  1. Strain the mixture and mold it.

  2. Serve with sweetened cream and optionally add melted chocolate 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. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Irish moss
Seaweed that contains gelling compounds, which set the milk into a soft, sliceable pudding as it cools.
Milk
Forms the body of the pudding and carries the moss's gelling compounds as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the pudding.
Melted chocolate
Adds flavor and richness when added optionally.

The step that matters

Cook the moss in the milk for the full 30 minutes. The gelling compounds in Irish moss must fully dissolve in the hot milk to set the pudding. If the moss is undercooked, the mixture may stay loose and fail to firm up once it cools and is molded.

“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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