Skip to main content
Dessert

Russian Jelly

A pineapple gelatin dessert flavored with lemon and sherry, layered in green, pink, and white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pineapple and sherry work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 228 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Russian Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Pound the pineapple and sugar together.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the pineapple mixture with water and lemon rind, and boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Soak the gelatine in a little cold water, then strain the saucepan contents over it.

  4. Add the sherry and lemon juice to the mixture.

Clarify and layer

  1. When the mixture is cold but not set, add the egg white and whisk until frothy.

  2. Divide the mixture into three parts; color one part green, one part pink, and leave the other white.

  3. Fill a mold, starting with the white layer, then alternate colors.

Set and unmold

  1. Let it stand for a while, then dip the mold in warm water and turn out the jelly.

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. Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Pineapple
Supplies the main fruit flavor and aroma to the jelly.
Leaf gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly that holds its shape when turned out.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the lemon and sherry acidity.
Egg white
Whisked in while cool, it helps clarify the jelly by trapping fine particles.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a warm, mellow flavor to the set jelly.

The step that matters

Adding the egg white. The egg white must be added only when the mixture is cold but not yet set. If it is too warm, the white cooks and fails to clarify; if the jelly has already set, it will not mix in evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar, sherry, egg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesPineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes