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Dessert

Strawberry Jelly

A fruit jelly made from mashed strawberries, sugar, lemon juice, and gelatin, set in a mold.

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 the fruit

  1. Mash the strawberries to a pulp and strain through coarse muslin.

Make the gelatin

  1. Mix the sugar and lemon juice with the soaked gelatin.

  2. Stir in the boiling water until clear.

  3. Strain the mixture through a flannel bag.

Set the jelly

  1. Add the fruit juice and strain again.

  2. Pour into a mold and place on ice.

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

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavor, color and body of the jelly.
Coxe's gelatine
Sets the liquid as it cools, giving the jelly its firm texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the fruit and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavor and balances sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir the gelatine until completely clear. Gelatine must fully dissolve in the hot liquid before it is strained and chilled. Undissolved granules leave the jelly cloudy or grainy and can cause uneven setting.

“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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