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Strawberry Isinglass Jelly

A jelly made from strawberries, sugar, water, lemon juice, red currant juice, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Strawberry Isinglass Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup and fruit

  1. Boil water and sugar together for 15 minutes.

  2. Pour boiling syrup over strawberries and let them sit overnight.

Make the jelly

  1. Clarify isinglass in 1 pint of water as directed.

  2. Drain syrup from strawberries and add red currant juice and lemon juice.

  3. When isinglass is nearly cold, mix everything together and pour into molds.

  4. Chill the molds over ice for about an hour before serving.

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. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  3. Sugar + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Isinglass
Gelatin-like protein that sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly when cooled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly body and a clear, firm texture.
Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, aroma and colour of the jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Red currant juice
Adds tart fruit flavour and extra acidity to the jelly.

The step that matters

Adding the isinglass when it is nearly cold. If the clarified isinglass is still very hot when mixed with the fruit and syrup, it can weaken its setting power and cloud the jelly. Mixing it once nearly cold helps it set firmly and clear.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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