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Dessert

Wine Jellies

A gelatin dessert made with wine, lemon, sugar, egg whites, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Wine Jellies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in 1 pint of cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Prepare molds by pouring cold water into them and emptying just before use.

Make the jelly

  1. Pour 1 quart of boiling water over the soaked gelatine, stirring well.

  2. Add the wine, sugar, strained lemon juice, lemon peel cuts, and cinnamon stick.

  3. Boil rapidly for about 15 seconds without stirring.

  4. Remove from heat and let it settle for 30 seconds, then skim off the scum.

  5. Pour the mixture through a jelly bag to ensure it is clear.

Set and serve

  1. Dip molds in warm water briefly before removing the jelly.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Wine + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and adds body to the set.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Wine
Gives the jelly its main flavour and aroma.
Eggs
Whites and shells are used to clarify the jelly, collecting particles so it runs clear.

The step that matters

Boil rapidly for about 15 seconds without stirring. Stirring during the boil can cloud the jelly and break up the egg-white raft that clarifies it. A brief rapid boil sets the clarifying action, and the gentle settle and jelly bag filtering then remove the sediment for a clear result.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, egg, cinnamon. 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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