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Dessert

Wine Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with sherry wine, sugar, lemon, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Wine Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jelly

  1. Cover the gelatine with cold water to dissolve.

  2. Add the sugar, lemon rind, lemon juice, cinnamon, boiling water, and sherry.

  3. Strain the mixture through a cloth.

Set and serve

  1. Place in a freezer and pack in ice for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with whipped cream.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Wine + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Sherry + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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
Sets the liquid into a firm, tender jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly a smooth, clear body.
Sherry wine
Provides the main flavour and liquid base of the jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and flavour.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine in cold water first. Gelatine must hydrate in cold water before heat is applied, so it dissolves evenly without clumping. Adding it dry to hot liquid can leave lumps and weaken the set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, wine, cinnamon. 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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Port 43Arrowroot 13Constantia 6Madeira 6Apricot 3Lemon 3 See all 239 →

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