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Dessert

Gelatine, with Fruit

Gelatin dessert made with lemon and orange juice, sugar, candied cherries, blanched almonds, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Gelatine, with Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Mix the lemon and orange juice with the sugar and add to the soaked gelatine.

  3. Pour in the boiling water and stir continuously until it boils.

Set the jelly

  1. Divide the mixture into two equal moulds.

  2. Stir candied cherries into one mould and blanched almonds into the other.

  3. Let the moulds set in a cool place or on ice for 24 hours.

Serve

  1. To serve, loosen the sides and invert the almond jelly on top of the cherry jelly on a fruit platter.

  2. Slice and 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly a smooth, clear body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.
Blanched almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavour to the almond jelly layer.
Candied cherries
Add chewy texture and sweet fruit flavour to the cherry jelly layer.

The step that matters

Stir the gelatine until fully dissolved. Gelatine must dissolve completely in the hot liquid, or it will not set evenly and may leave soft or grainy patches. Stirring while the mixture comes to the boil helps it dissolve evenly throughout before the moulds are filled and chilled.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chickpeafits less well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, sugar. 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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