Skip to main content
Dessert

Gelatine Jelly

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

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

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 ↓

Gelatine Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Soften the gelatine

  1. Pour 1 pint of cold water over the gelatine.

  2. Let the mixture sit for 30 minutes.

Make the syrup

  1. In a separate bowl, pour 3 pints of boiling water over 2 pounds of white sugar.

  2. Grate the rind of 3 lemons into the sugar syrup.

  3. Add the lemon juice to the sugar syrup.

Combine and strain

  1. Combine the gelatine mixture with the sugar syrup.

  2. Add 1 pint of wine.

  3. Strain the mixture through fine muslin.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 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
Provides the structure that sets the liquid into a firm jelly.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the syrup that the jelly sets in.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the sweetness.
Lemon rind
Adds aroma from the oils in the peel.
Wine
Adds flavour and aroma to the finished jelly.

The step that matters

Combine the gelatine mixture with the sugar syrup. Gelatine only sets once it is fully dissolved and evenly distributed. If it is not fully dissolved in the warm liquid, it can form lumps or set unevenly, so the mixture should be stirred until smooth before straining.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

More gelatin jelly recipes

Lemon 4 See all 74 →

You might also like

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