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Dessert

Bread-Jelly

A jelly made by simmering toasted bread in water, sweetened with sugar, wine, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Bread-Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the crust from the bread and toast it to a light brown color.

Make the jelly

  1. Place the toasted bread in a pan with cold water and simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture through muslin.

  3. Sweeten and flavor with wine and lemon juice.

  4. Pour into a mold and turn out when needed.

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

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

  3. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

  4. Bread + winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together956 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

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

Bread
Toasted bread simmered in water releases starch and flavor, which thicken and give the liquid body.
Cold water
Serves as the cooking liquid that extracts flavor and starch from the toasted bread.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the savory toast flavor of the liquid.
Wine
Adds aroma and flavor to the finished jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmering the toasted bread. Simmering for the full time lets starch from the bread gel into a thick, clear liquid. Too short a simmer leaves the jelly weak and it may not set firmly when cooled.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, wine. 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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