Why it works: Wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Wine Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Pour 1 quart of cold water over 1 box of gelatine and let it stand until dissolved.
Add 1 pint of hot water, 1 pint of wine, the grated rind of 1 lemon, the juice of 2 lemons, and 1 pound of sugar.
Stir until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is well combined.
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.
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Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,157 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together9,581 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Applefits better
- Grapefits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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