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Dessert

Lemon Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with bananas, oranges, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Lemon Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin

  1. Dissolve a little more than 1/4 box of gelatin in 1/2 pint of cold water.

  2. Add 1/2 pint of boiling water, the juice of 3 lemons, and sweeten to taste.

Assemble and set

  1. Cut the bananas lengthwise.

  2. Slice the oranges.

  3. In a vegetable dish, place a layer of cut bananas.

  4. Place a layer of sliced oranges.

  5. Sprinkle a little sugar over the bananas and oranges.

  6. Fill the dish in this order.

  7. When the gelatin has cooled slightly, pour it over the bananas and oranges.

  8. Serve.

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. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

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

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

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

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly that holds the fruit in place.
Bananas
Add body and sweetness as the soft fruit layer in the jelly.
Oranges
Add sweet-tart juice and aroma to the layered fruit.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the sweetness of the fruit and sugar.

The step that matters

Cool the gelatin slightly before pouring. Gelatin poured while very hot can soften or break up the fruit layers and cloud the set. Letting it cool slightly keeps the layers distinct while it still pours easily.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, gelatin, lemon, sugar. 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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