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Ambrosia Jelly Blocks

A citrus jelly made with grated orange rind, coconut, gelatin, and orange juice, set into blocks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Ambrosia Jelly Blocks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in 2 tablespoons of cold water for 15 minutes.

  2. Stand the gelatin over hot water to melt it.

Make the jelly

  1. Remove from heat and add the grated orange rind, coconut, sugar, orange juice, and lemon juice.

  2. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  3. Pour the mixture into a small square pan or a tin candy box, about ½ inch deep.

  4. Place in a cool area and stir occasionally until it thickens enough to hold the coconut throughout.

  5. Chill for at least 2 hours or longer.

Serve

  1. To serve, dip the pan in lukewarm water, then turn out and cut into blocks.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Orange + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Coconut + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Coconut + gelatintop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

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

What each ingredient does

Granulated gelatin
Sets the juice mixture into a firm jelly that holds its shape when cut.
Orange juice
Provides the main liquid, flavour and sweetness of the jelly.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the jelly and adds body to the set.
Desiccated coconut
Adds texture and is suspended evenly through the jelly as it thickens.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the orange juice.

The step that matters

Let the mixture thicken before chilling. Gelatin sets as it cools, so the coconut only stays evenly distributed if the mixture is stirred while it thickens. Stirring at this stage prevents the coconut from sinking to the bottom before the jelly firms.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, gelatin, sugar, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, gelatin, sugar, lemon. 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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