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Dessert

Claret Jelly

A wine jelly made with claret, sugar, lemon, currant jelly, isinglass, and brandy, served with vanilla whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Claret Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Combine claret, lump sugar, lemon peel and juice, red currant jelly, and dissolved isinglass or gelatine in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer for a few minutes, then bring to a boil.

  3. Add brandy and strain the mixture through a fine cloth into a mold.

Serve

  1. Once cooled, carefully turn out the jelly and serve with vanilla whipped cream around it.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Red currant + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  4. Brandy + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together806 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + red curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 or gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the wine and balances its tartness.
Red currant jelly
Adds fruit flavour, colour and some body to the set.
Claret
Forms the main liquid and gives the jelly its colour and wine flavour.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that cut through the sweetness.

The step that matters

Strain through a fine cloth before setting. Straining removes sediment and bits of fruit and peel so the jelly sets clear and smooth. Brandy is added off the heat so its alcohol aroma is not boiled away.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, red currant, brandy, vanilla, cream):

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Blackberryfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, red currant, brandy, vanilla, cream. 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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