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Dessert

Liqueur Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with sugar, water, lemon juice, isinglass, and liqueur.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Liqueur Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sugar and 1 pint of water. Boil gently until no scum forms, removing any that appears.

  2. In another saucepan, boil the isinglass with the remaining ½ pint of water until dissolved.

Set the jelly

  1. Stir the lemon juice and the dissolved isinglass into the syrup. Add the liqueur and bring to a boil.

  2. Cover the saucepan and let it sit by the side of the fire for a few minutes.

  3. Pour the jelly through a bag into a mold and place the mold in ice until set.

Serve

  1. To serve, dip the mold in hot water, wipe the outside, and loosen the jelly by running a knife around the edges before turning it out onto a dish.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 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. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Isinglass
Fish-derived gelatin that dissolves in hot liquid and sets the jelly as it cools.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the syrup that the jelly is built on.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the syrup and liqueur.
Liqueur
Provides the main flavour and aroma of the jelly.

The step that matters

Pour the jelly through a bag into a mold and place the mold in ice until set.. Isinglass sets only when the liquid cools enough, so the mold must be chilled fully. Straining through a bag removes impurities and scum, giving a clear jelly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup. 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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