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Dessert

Wine Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with lemon juice, sugar, sherry, brandy, cinnamon, cloves, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Wine Jelly

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak gelatine in cold water for 1 hour or more until dissolved.

  2. Add sugar and boiling water; boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Strain through a flannel bag.

Flavour and set

  1. Stir in sherry wine, brandy, cinnamon, and cloves.

  2. Set on ice to thicken.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  4. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Forms the gel structure that makes the jelly set firm when cooled.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly its body and clear texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.
Sherry wine
Adds wine flavour and aroma to the jelly.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth, and a little extra alcohol flavour.

The step that matters

Strain through a flannel bag. Straining removes sediment and solids so the jelly sets clear and smooth. Letting the gelatine mixture settle or leaving debris in it can leave cloudiness or grit in the finished set.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, sherry, wine, brandy, cinnamon, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, wine, brandy, cinnamon, clove. 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.

More wine jelly recipes

Port 43Arrowroot 13Constantia 6Madeira 6Apricot 3Lemon 3 See all 239 →

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