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Fruit Juice

A gelatin-based fruit juice made with orange, lemon, coffee, wine, and assorted fruit and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Fruit Juice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, combine orange juice and lemon juice.

  2. Dissolve gelatin in cold water, then add boiling water and sugar.

  3. Mix in the fruit juices and stir until well combined.

Add fruit and set

  1. When the mixture begins to thicken, add sliced bananas, cherries, pineapple, nuts, and orange sections.

  2. Pour into glasses and let stand until firm.

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. Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the liquid as it cools into a soft, wobbly jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the citrus juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor that cuts the sweetness.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and most of the liquid base.

The step that matters

Adding the fruit as the mixture begins to thicken. If the fruit goes in while the mixture is still too thin, it sinks or floats unevenly. If the gelatin has already set too far, the fruit stays unevenly distributed and the jelly can look lumpy. Adding it at the first sign of thickening suspends the pieces evenly through the gel.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, gelatin, sugar, coffee, wine, banana, pineapple):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, gelatin, sugar, coffee, wine, banana, pineapple. 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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