Skip to main content
Dessert

Invalid Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with sugar, citrus juice, eggs, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Invalid Jelly

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rasp the sugar on the grater.

  2. Place the sugar, gelatine and water in a lined pan.

Make the jelly

  1. Stir until the gelatine dissolves, then add the lemon or orange juice and bring to a boil.

  2. Beat the eggs, and when the gelatine mixture has cooled slightly, pour it onto the eggs while stirring continuously.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Allow to cool, then pour into wetted tin molds.

  2. Once set, dip the molds in warm water and turn out.

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Eggs
Add richness and body to the clear jelly mixture.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the juice.
Lemon or orange juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring the gelatine onto the eggs. The gelatine mixture must have cooled slightly and be poured in a thin stream while stirring constantly. Hot liquid poured too quickly can scramble the eggs, leaving cooked specks in the jelly instead of a smooth, even mixture.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

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

More gelatin jelly recipes

Lemon 4 See all 74 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes