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Isinglass Jelly, &C

A jelly made by boiling isinglass and cloves, straining over sugar, and adding wine when cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,958 recipes. Both carry cis-isoeugenol, which smells clove, spicy. The science ↓

Isinglass Jelly, &C

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put the isinglass and cloves into a quart of water.

  2. Boil it down to a pint.

  3. Strain it over a pound of loaf sugar.

  4. When cold, add a little wine and it will be ready for use.

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. Clove + winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-isoeugenol (clove, spicy).

  2. Clove + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together17,182 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Clove and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 17,182 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

Isinglass
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the jelly.
Wine
Adds flavour and aroma to the finished jelly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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