Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberries in Jelly

A chilled dessert of strawberries set in a gelatinous lemon-sugar jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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 ↓

Strawberries in Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Dissolve gelatine in cold water.

  2. Add boiling water and sugar, stirring until dissolved.

  3. Juice the lemon and add it to the mixture.

Set and serve

  1. When the jelly begins to thicken, arrange strawberries in a wet mold.

  2. Pour the jelly over the strawberries and refrigerate until set.

  3. Turn out onto a platter and garnish with whipped cream.

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

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly that holds its shape when turned out.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps give it a clean, smooth body.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the flavour.
Strawberries
Provide the fruit flavour and visible pieces suspended in the set jelly.

The step that matters

Pour the jelly at the right thickness. Gelatine must be partly thickened before the strawberries are added. If the jelly is too thin, the berries float and settle unevenly, and if it is too set, it will not pour around them to fill the mold evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes