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Jellies

A lemon gelatin jelly made with Nelson's gelatine, sugar, lemon juice, and optional wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Jellies

Why it works: Lemon and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Jellies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ pint of cold water with the lemon peel for 1 hour.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the soaked gelatine and ½ pint of boiling water, stirring until dissolved.

  3. Add ½ pound of sugar and stir until melted.

  4. Mix in the juice of the lemons and either water or wine.

  5. Beat the egg whites and stir them into the jelly mixture.

  6. Heat the mixture slowly to boiling, then simmer for 5 minutes.

Clarify and set

  1. Filter the jelly through a bag to clarify 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly its body.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity and bright lemon flavour.
Egg whites
Bind to impurities and rise with them, clarifying the jelly when filtered.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture slowly to boiling. Egg whites need gentle heating to coagulate and carry impurities to the top. Heating too fast can break up the foam and leave the jelly cloudy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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