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Dessert

Corn Starch Jelly

A clear jelly made with corn starch, sugar, water, lemon, and served with 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 ↓

Corn Starch Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the water with the sugar.

  2. Add the juice of the lemon and half the rind cut into small pieces.

  3. Mix the corn starch with an extra cup of water and stir it into the boiling syrup.

  4. Let it boil slowly for about 10 minutes until it becomes almost clear.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into custard cups or molds and let cool.

  2. Serve in saucers with a spoonful of whipped sweetened cream.

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. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a firm jelly as it boils and cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps give the jelly its flavor.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the cornstarch mixture. Cornstarch must boil for several minutes to fully cook; undercooked starch leaves a raw taste and a weak set. Stirring keeps it from lumping or scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, corn, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, corn, cream. 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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