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Dessert

Gelatine Food

A sweet gelatin dessert made with gelatine, water, arrowroot, milk, cream, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Gelatine Food

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Boil the soaked gelatine in ½ pint of water until dissolved, about 10-15 minutes.

Make the dessert

  1. Mix 1 teaspoon of arrowroot with a little water to form a paste.

  2. Add the arrowroot paste to the boiling gelatine mixture, stirring constantly.

  3. Stir in ½ tumbler of milk and 2 tablespoons of cream.

  4. Sweeten with white sugar to taste and remove from heat immediately.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Gelatine
Dissolves when boiled and sets as the mixture cools, giving the dessert its body.
Arrowroot
Thickens the liquid when heated, giving a smooth, glossy texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild dairy flavour to the dessert.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the set and improving mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the arrowroot paste. Arrowroot must be stirred into the boiling liquid constantly, otherwise it can clump into lumps instead of thickening evenly. Removing the mixture from heat promptly stops it from over-thickening or losing its smooth texture.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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