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Dessert

Strawberry Isinglass Jelly

A strawberry jelly made with isinglass, sugar, water, and lemon juice, set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and lemon 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 ↓

Strawberry Isinglass Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

  1. Place strawberries in a bowl and pour over a syrup made by boiling sugar and water for 15 minutes.

  2. Cover and let the strawberries soak overnight.

Make the jelly

  1. In a saucepan, combine isinglass and water mixed with egg white.

  2. Heat gently until dissolved.

  3. Remove any scum.

  4. Strain the mixture through muslin.

  5. Let the strained mixture cool to lukewarm.

  6. Mix in the drained syrup from the strawberries, red currant juice, and lemon juice.

  7. Pour the jelly into a damp mold.

  8. Refrigerate until set, about 8 to 9 hours.

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. Red currant + lemontop 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. Egg + lemontop 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. 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

Isinglass
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Strawberries
Provide the main flavour, colour and fruit body of the jelly.
Refined sugar
Sweetens the syrup and adds body to the jelly.
Egg white
Its proteins bind with impurities so they can be skimmed off, clarifying the jelly.
Red currant juice
Adds tartness and a deeper red colour to the jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Remove any scum. Scum left on the surface after heating contains coagulated egg white and impurities. Skimming it off keeps the jelly clear and free of cloudiness.

Swap the red currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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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