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Dessert

Fruit Jelly

A chilled dessert made from fruit, lemon and orange juice, sugar, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Fruit Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare your fruit by chopping it if necessary.

  2. In a bowl, combine the fruit with the lemon juice, orange juice, and sugar to taste.

  3. Dissolve the gelatin in a little warm water or the juice from the canned fruit.

  4. Mix the dissolved gelatin into the fruit mixture.

  5. If desired, add a little wine or other liquor.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a square mold and refrigerate until set.

  2. Once set, cut into squares and serve with poultry or meats.

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. Peach + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together385 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Fruit
Provides the main flavor, color, and body of the jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and balances the tartness of the citrus.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin fully. Gelatin must be completely dissolved in warm liquid before mixing; undissolved granules leave soft spots or stiff clumps and can prevent an even set.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, sugar, gelatin, wine. 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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