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Dessert

Fancy Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with lemon and orange juice, sherry, brandy, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fancy Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 1 hour or more.

Make the jelly

  1. Add sugar and boiling water, then stir until dissolved.

  2. Mix in lemon juice, orange juice, sherry, and brandy.

Mould and set

  1. Rinse a mold with cold water.

  2. Fill the mold with the jelly, strained through a fine sieve.

  3. Set aside to harden.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Sherry + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the citrus juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour that cuts the sweetness.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and aroma.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a warm, wine-based flavour.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a spirited flavour to the jelly.

The step that matters

Soak the gelatine fully before dissolving. Gelatine must hydrate in cold water so its protein strands can unwind and later re-link. If it is under-soaked or added to liquid too cold, it may dissolve unevenly or set weakly, leaving lumps or a soft jelly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, orange, sugar, brandy. 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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