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Isinglass Jelly, Strawberry

A strawberry jelly made with isinglass, sugar, lemon juice, and red currant juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and red currant work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Isinglass Jelly, Strawberry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Pour ½ cup of boiled water over the strawberries and add the loaf sugar.

  2. Let it sit overnight, then drain the syrup without bruising the strawberries.

  3. Add lemon juice and red currant juice to the syrup.

Set the jelly

  1. Clarify 2½ ounces of isinglass in 1 pint of water and let it cool.

  2. Mix the cooled isinglass with the fruit juice and pour into moulds.

  3. Place the moulds in ice to set.

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 + red curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Strawberries
Provide the main flavour and colour of the jelly.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw juice out of the strawberries.
Isinglass
Gelatinous protein that sets the juice into a firm jelly when chilled.
Red currant juice
Adds tartness and extra fruit flavour to balance the sweetness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and sharpens the fruit taste.

The step that matters

Clarify the isinglass and cool it before mixing. Isinglass must be fully dissolved and cooled to lukewarm before it meets the juice. If it is too hot it can weaken the set, and if it is not fully dissolved it can leave specks or uneven firmness in the finished jelly.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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