Name: Orange Jelly
Ingredients: 1/2 cupful of cold water; 1 cupful of boiling water; 1 cupful of sugar; 2 cupfuls of orange-juice; 1/2 box; 1 ounce; 1 lemon; two bright-skinned oranges

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,634 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

1/2 box, or 1 ounce, of gelatine. 1/2 cupful of cold water. 1 cupful of boiling water. Juice of 1 lemon. 1 cupful of sugar. 2 cupfuls of orange-juice, filtered.
Combine the same as directed for wine jelly.
A stronger flavor and color of orange can be obtained by soaking with the gelatine the grated yellow rind of one or two bright-skinned oranges. In this case the juice need not be filtered, for the mixture will have to be passed through flannel. Putting it through several times gives a clearer and more brilliant jelly.

By Mary Ronald. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon share little aroma chemistry, yet 53,532 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

Vanillabetter flavor fit
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).