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Dessert

Cardinal Jelly

A gelatin-based jelly made with cranberry juice, sherry, lemon, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cranberry and lemon work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cardinal Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Cover the gelatine with cold water and let it soak for one hour.

  2. Add the hot water to the soaked gelatine and strain the mixture.

  3. Stir in the sugar, lemon juice, cranberry juice, and sherry.

  4. Set the mixture on ice until cold.

Serve

  1. Serve with 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. Cranberry + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

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

  2. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cranberry + sherrytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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 structure that lets the liquid set into a firm jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the tartness of the juices and lemons.
Cranberry juice
Adds the main fruit flavour and tartness to the jelly.
Sherry
Adds aroma and depth of flavour to the jelly.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness that lift the sweetness and fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Set the mixture on ice until cold. Gelatine forms its network as the liquid cools, so the mixture must become fully cold to firm up properly. Rushing this step or leaving it at room temperature can leave the jelly soft or loose.

Swap the cranberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Cranberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, 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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