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Dessert

Cranberry Jelly

A jelly made from cranberry juice, sugar, lemon juice, egg whites, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cranberry and lemon work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cranberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make ½ pint of very strong isinglass jelly using nearly ½ ounce of isinglass.

  2. Once clear, add 1 pint of cranberry juice that has been heated and pressed from the fruit.

  3. Sweeten with ½ pound of loaf sugar.

  4. Add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and the whites and shells of 3 eggs.

Clarify and set

  1. Simmer gently without stirring for a few minutes.

  2. Let it stand to settle, then strain until clear.

  3. Pour into a mold.

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. Cranberry + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cranberry + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together374 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

Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the juice into a clear, wobbly jelly.
Cranberry juice
Provides the main flavour, tartness and liquid base of the jelly.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the cranberry juice.
Egg whites
Coagulate while simmering and collect impurities, helping clarify the jelly.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without stirring. Stirring or boiling hard breaks up the egg white raft that traps cloudy particles, so the jelly stays cloudy instead of clear.

Swap the cranberry

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Cranberrythe original

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.

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