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Dessert

Another Wine Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with Madeira wine, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Another Wine Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ pint of water for 15 minutes.

  2. Add ½ pint of boiling water and stir until the gelatine is dissolved.

  3. Mix in the juice of 2 lemons and enough Madeira wine to make a total of 1 quart.

  4. Strain the mixture and set it to cool.

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

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

  2. Sugar + madeira winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Lemon + madeira winetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Madeira wine
Gives the jelly its main flavour and adds aroma.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the wine.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully in the boiling water. Gelatine only sets properly when fully dissolved. Undissolved granules leave weak spots and grainy texture, so stir until no particles remain before adding the wine and lemon.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, madeira 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.

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