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Dessert

Strawberry Isinglass Jelly

A clear strawberry jelly made with isinglass, sugar, and lemon juice, set in molds after clarifying the syrup.

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

Make the strawberry syrup

  1. Boil 1 pint of water and ¾ pound of sugar together for 15 minutes.

  2. Pour the boiling syrup over 1 quart of hulled strawberries.

  3. Let the strawberries sit overnight.

Set the jelly

  1. Clarify 2½ ounces of isinglass in 1 pint of water as directed.

  2. Drain the syrup from the strawberries.

  3. Add 2-3 tablespoons of red currant juice and the lemon juice to the strawberries.

  4. When the isinglass is nearly cold, mix it with the strawberry mixture.

  5. Pour the mixture into molds.

Finer flavor option

  1. For a finer flavor, bruise 3-4 pints of strawberries.

  2. Sprinkle the bruised strawberries with 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  3. Let the juice flow for 1-2 hours before using.

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. 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, tender jelly as it cools.
Strawberries
Provide the main flavour, colour and body of the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps draw flavour out of the strawberries.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavour.
Red currant juice
Adds tartness and extra fruit flavour to the strawberry base.

The step that matters

Add isinglass when nearly cold. Isinglass is a gelatin-like setting agent. If it is added while still very hot it can weaken its setting power, and if it is too cold it may set unevenly or before the mixture is poured into molds.

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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