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Pomegranate Jelly

A layered jelly made from mashed pomegranate seeds, orange and lemon juice, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Pomegranate Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Mash the seeds of the pomegranates.

  2. Mix the mashed seeds with the juices of the oranges and lemons.

  3. Add the rind of one lemon to the mixture.

  4. Filter the mixture through blotting paper.

Layer and set

  1. Pour a layer of jelly into a mold and let it set.

  2. Once set, add a layer of pomegranate mixture, then another layer of jelly, repeating until the mold is filled.

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. Pomegranate + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Pomegranate + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pomegranates
Provides the main flavor, color and juice for the jelly.
Oranges
Adds juice that gives the jelly a mellow, sweet-citrus flavor.
Lemons
Juice adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Lemon rind
Oils in the peel add a fresh, aromatic citrus scent.

The step that matters

Let each jelly layer set before adding the next. If a layer is still liquid when the next one is poured on, the layers can mix and blur instead of forming distinct bands. Waiting until the layer is firm keeps the stripes clean.

Swap the pomegranate

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Pomegranatethe original
  3. Mangofits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon. 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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