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Dessert

Hartshorn Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from hartshorn shavings, water, wine, citrus, sugar, and egg whites.

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 ↓

Hartshorn Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Boil hartshorn shavings in water until one third of the water evaporates.

  2. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

  3. Melt the cooled mixture, add orange and lemon peel for color, and skim well.

  4. Stir in wine, lemon juice, and sugar; adjust sweetness to taste.

  5. Whisk the egg whites and add them to the mixture; stir well.

  6. Boil the mixture briefly, then adjust lemon juice to taste.

Clarify and test

  1. Pour the mixture into a jelly bag lined with egg whites and let it hang near a fire to keep warm until it runs clear.

  2. To test if the jelly is ready, take a spoonful and let it cool.

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. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Orange + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Hartshorn shavings
Dissolve into the water and set as the gelling agent that firms the jelly when cooled.
Whites of eggs
Bind impurities when boiled so they can be removed, leaving the jelly clear.
Fine sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon and wine.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar.
Rhenish or white mountain wine
Adds flavor and acidity to the jelly base.

The step that matters

Clarifying the jelly through the egg-white-lined bag. Egg whites coagulate when heated and trap cloudy particles, so the jelly must be strained slowly and kept warm to run clear rather than cloudy.

“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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