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Dessert

Wine Jelly, Claret

A gelatinous dessert made from claret wine, sugar, lemon, spices, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Wine Jelly, Claret

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. In a clean pan, combine water, claret, sugar, lemon rind and juice, clove, cinnamon, and gelatine.

  2. Add the crushed shells and the beaten egg whites.

  3. Whisk the mixture until it boils, then set aside for 10 minutes without stirring.

Strain and set

  1. Strain through a jelly bag or damask napkin and pour into a mould.

  2. Set in a cold place to solidify.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Egg whites
Coagulate as they heat, trapping particles so the crushed shells clear the liquid.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Crushed shells
Attract cloudy particles as they are heated, helping clarify the jelly.
Claret
Provides the wine flavour and colour of the jelly.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Whisk until it boils, then rest without stirring. Egg whites and shells must be whisked in during heating so they can coagulate and collect impurities. Stirring after the boil would break up the forming clot and leave the jelly cloudy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, cinnamon, 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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