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Dessert

Claret Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with claret wine, lemon, sugar, cinnamon, brandy, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Claret Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the gelatine in a little cold water or pour boiling water over the gelatine leaf.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan.

  3. Heat the mixture until it boils.

  4. Strain through a flannel bag.

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 + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cinnamon + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Brandy + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 clear, firm jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Coagulate when heated and trap impurities, clarifying the jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon and claret.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that cut through the sweetness.
Claret
Provides the wine flavour and deep colour of the jelly.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until it boils. As the egg whites heat, they coagulate and collect impurities that a flannel bag can then strain out. Boiling is needed for this clarifying action, and the jelly stays clearer if the mixture is not stirred aggressively once it begins to set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, brandy, 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.

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