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Dessert

Table Jelly

A gelatin-based jelly made with sugar, lemon juice, orange peel, cinnamon, and water, set in molds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Table Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine, sugar, lemon juice, orange peel, and cinnamon in 1 pint of cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Add 3 pints of boiling water and stir until the sugar and gelatine dissolve.

  3. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag or coarse towel.

  4. Add burnt sugar for color if desired.

Set

  1. Wet the molds with a mixture of white of egg and water to prevent sticking.

  2. Pour the jelly into the molds and set aside to cool.

  3. For best results, make the jelly the day before serving to allow it to harden.

  4. In warm weather, use a little more gelatine or less water for better setting.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Gelatine
Forms the gel structure that makes the jelly set firm when cooled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly its clear, tender body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine completely. Gelatine must fully dissolve in the hot liquid before straining and cooling. Undissolved granules will not hydrate evenly, leaving weak spots or grainy texture and reducing the jelly's ability to set firm.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, cinnamon, egg. 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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