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Dessert

Lemon Orange Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with lemon rind, lemon juice, orange juice, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Lemon Orange Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

Make the jelly

  1. Add boiling water and sugar to the soaked gelatine, stirring until the sugar melts.

  2. Mix in the grated rind and juice of the lemon and the juice of the oranges.

  3. Strain the mixture through a napkin and pour it into a mold.

Set

  1. Refrigerate until set.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the citrus juices.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma from its juice and grated rind.
Oranges
Adds juice for sweet-tart citrus flavour and extra liquid.

The step that matters

Soaking the gelatine. Gelatine must hydrate fully in cold water before hot liquid is added. Unsoaked granules can clump and set unevenly, leaving a grainy or weak jelly.

“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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