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Dessert

Red Raspberry Jelly

A fruit jelly made from raspberries, sugar, lemon juice, water, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and gelatin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Red Raspberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatin in the cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Mash the raspberries and sugar together and let them stand for 2 hours.

Make the jelly

  1. Press all the juice through a fine strainer.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the gelatin and stir until dissolved.

  3. Add the strained raspberry juice and lemon juice to the gelatin mixture.

Mould and set

  1. Strain again and pour into molds that have been dipped in cold water.

  2. Place in a cold area until firm.

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. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Lemon + gelatintop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

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

Raspberries
Provide the main flavor and color, and the juice that makes up most of the jelly.
Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and balances the tartness of the raspberries and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the raspberry flavor.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatin fully. Stir the gelatin in the boiling water until no granules remain before adding the juice. Undissolved gelatin leaves gritty spots and can leave the jelly unevenly set or weak.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, gelatin. 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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