Skip to main content
Dessert

Cidek Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made with cider, lemon, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cidek Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Combine gelatine, grated lemon rind, lemon juice, and cold water in a bowl.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 1 hour.

Make the jelly

  1. Add loaf sugar and boiling water to the mixture, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Stir in the cider.

Set

  1. Pour the mixture into molds and set in a cool place 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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + cidertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together986 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Sugar + cidertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Forms the gel network that makes the liquid set into a firm jelly.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly its body and smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Cider
Provides the main apple flavour and liquid for the jelly.

The step that matters

Letting the gelatine stand in cold water. Gelatine must first soften and absorb the cold water before heat is applied. Adding it directly to hot liquid or skipping the rest can leave lumps and uneven setting.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cider. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes