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Dessert

Strawberry Jelly

A gelatin-based dessert made with strawberries, sugar, lemon juice, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

  2. In a pot, combine sugar, lemon juice, and boiling water; bring to a boil.

  3. Add the soaked gelatine and stir until dissolved.

  4. Mix in the mashed strawberries and strain the mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until hardened.

  2. Serve with 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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the fruit and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the strawberries.
Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and aroma.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully before adding fruit. Gelatine only sets when fully dissolved in hot liquid. Undissolved granules or lumps leave weak spots and cloudiness, so the jelly may not firm evenly. Stir until no grains remain before straining and chilling.

“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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