Skip to main content
Dessert

Pomegranate Clear Cakes

A clear jelly cake made from boiled apples, pomegranate, orange, and lemon juices, sweetened with sugar and colored with cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Pomegranate Clear Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple jelly

  1. Pare the apples.

  2. Place the apples in a saucepan with enough water to cover them.

  3. Cook until soft.

  4. Press the pulp through a sieve and strain it.

Make the cakes

  1. Boil the jelly with the juices and grated rinds of the pomegranates, orange, and lemon.

  2. Strain the mixture again.

  3. Add 1¼ pounds of sugar for every pound of jelly.

  4. Boil until it cracks.

  5. Color with cochineal.

  6. Remove any scum before it cools.

  7. Pour the mixture into glasses.

  8. Set the glasses in a warm place until the top is dry.

  9. Turn the cakes out and let them dry again.

  10. Cut into desired shapes.

  11. Place the cakes in the oven to harden.

  12. Lay them on sieves to dry thoroughly.

  13. Store in boxes with paper between layers.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Pomegranate + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together116 recipes

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

  3. Pomegranate + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together225 recipes

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

  4. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Apple + pomegranatetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together48 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Good boiling apples
Provide natural pectin in the cooked pulp that helps the jelly set firm.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the jelly and, when boiled down, helps it set into a firm, clear cake.
Pomegranate juice
Adds the main flavor and tartness along with the color of the cakes.
Orange and lemon juice
Add acidity and bright citrus flavor that balances the sweetness.
Orange and lemon rind
Contribute aromatic oils that add fragrance and depth of citrus flavor.

The step that matters

Boil until it cracks. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set firm. Undercooked mixtures stay soft and sticky, while overcooking makes the cakes brittle and prone to burning.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

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

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes