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Dessert

Cider Jelly

A gelatin dessert made from cider, sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cider Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve the gelatine and sugar in 1 pint of cider for 30 minutes.

  2. Boil the remaining 3 pints of cider.

Combine and set

  1. Once boiling, add the cider mixture with sugar and gelatine, and mix thoroughly but do not boil.

  2. Remove from heat, add lemon juice if desired, and strain into cold water-wetted moulds.

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 + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cider + cinnamontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

  5. Cider + lemontop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together986 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 cider liquid into a firm, sliceable gel as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the gelatine and balances the tartness of the cider and lemon.
Cider
Forms the liquid base and supplies the main apple flavour.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that lift the sweetness and aroma.
Cinnamon
Adds a warm spiced aroma to the cider base.

The step that matters

Mix thoroughly but do not boil. Gelatine is a protein that loses much of its setting strength when boiled. Once the gelatine is added, keep the mixture hot but below boiling, and stir until it is fully dissolved so it sets evenly and firmly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, sugar, cinnamon. 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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