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Dessert

Orange Jelly

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Orange Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin and syrup

  1. Soak the gelatin in 1 pint of water.

  2. Boil the remaining water with the sugar.

  3. Skim the boiling mixture.

Make the jelly

  1. Add the dissolved gelatin, orange juice, lemon juice, and beaten egg white.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Skim the boiling mixture.

  4. Cook until it jellies.

Set

  1. Pour into a mold.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 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

Gelatin
Provides the structure that lets the liquid set into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Orange juice
Supplies the main flavor and aroma of the jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the liquid.
Egg white
Clarifies the jelly: as it cooks it collects impurities that can then be skimmed off.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil with the egg white. The beaten egg white must be stirred in before heating and left undisturbed as it boils. As it coagulates, it gathers cloudy particles to the surface, where they can be skimmed away. Stirring or boiling too hard breaks up the coagulated white and leaves the jelly cloudy.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raspberryfits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, lemon, sugar, 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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