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Dessert

Fruit Jelly

Fruit jelly made with bananas, oranges, grapes, water, gelatin, lemon juice, orange peel, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Fruit Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquid

  1. Soak gelatin in water for 1 hour.

  2. Add lemon juice and grated orange peel.

  3. Sweeten to taste.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Halve and seed the grapes.

  2. Cut oranges into 1-inch pieces.

  3. Slice the bananas.

Set the jelly

  1. Pour the mixture over the fruit.

  2. Cool the jelly.

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. Banana + grapetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

  4. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Grape + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,412 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Gels the liquid as it cools, holding the fruit in a soft, sliceable jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the fruit flavours.
Bananas
Add body and natural sweetness, softening the texture of the set jelly.
Oranges
Contribute juice and aroma, with the peel adding fragrant citrus oils.

The step that matters

Soak the gelatine fully. Gelatine must be fully hydrated before use so it dissolves evenly. Unhydrated granules leave grainy spots and can produce a weak, uneven set throughout the jelly.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Cranberryfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, grape, lemon, 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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