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Dessert

Wine Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with sherry wine, lemon juice, sugar, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Wine Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the gelatine in 1 pint of cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Pour in 1 quart of boiling water and stir until dissolved.

  3. Add the sherry wine, sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest.

  4. Beat the egg whites and stir them into the mixture.

  5. Heat the mixture over low heat until it reaches boiling point.

  6. Let it stand for 1 minute, then strain through a jelly bag rinsed in boiling water.

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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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, wobbly jelly when it cools.
Egg whites
Bind to impurities as they heat, helping the jelly strain clear.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the sherry and lemon acidity.
Lemon juice and zest
Add acidity and bright aroma that cut the sweetness.
Sherry wine
Gives the jelly its main flavour and aroma.

The step that matters

Straining through the jelly bag. Egg whites must be heated with the liquid so they can trap cloudy particles, and the bag must be rinsed in boiling water so it stays clean and does not cool the liquid. Letting it stand first lets the solids settle, which gives a clearer jelly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, wine, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, wine, sugar, egg. 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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