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Dessert

Cranberry Jelly

A gelatin dessert made from cranberry juice, sugar, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cranberry and sugar work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cranberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a strong isinglass jelly according to package instructions.

  2. Once the jelly is cold, mix it with double the amount of cranberry juice.

Make and set the jelly

  1. Sweeten the mixture with granulated sugar and bring it to a boil.

  2. Strain the mixture into a mold.

Tip

  1. Use good quality lump sugar for a clear jelly.

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. Cranberry + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together374 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Isinglass
Gelatinizing agent that sets the liquid into a firm jelly when cooled.
Cranberry juice
Provides the liquid base and tart flavor of the jelly.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the juice and balances its tartness.

The step that matters

Straining the mixture into the mold. Isinglass sets as the liquid cools, so the mixture must be poured while still fluid and kept undisturbed. Straining removes particles that would cloud the finished 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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