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Dessert

Claret Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with claret wine, sugar, lemon juice, mace, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Claret Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in 1 cup of water.

  2. In a bowl, combine the soaked gelatine, sugar, claret, boiling water, lemon juice, and mace.

  3. Stir until the gelatine and sugar dissolve.

  4. Strain the mixture through a flannel bag.

Set and chill

  1. Wet a mold and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Refrigerate until set, preferably overnight.

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

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

  2. Lemon + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Sugar + macetop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,096 recipes

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

Gelatine
Provides the gel structure that lets the jelly set firm and hold its shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps dissolve the gelatine evenly into the liquid.
Claret
Supplies the main liquid and the wine flavour that defines the jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the wine flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture through a flannel bag. Straining removes undissolved gelatine and bits of solids, giving a clear, smooth jelly rather than a cloudy or grainy one.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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