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Dessert

A New Dessert

A lemon gelatin dessert made with lemon rind, juice, vanilla, powdered sugar, eggs, and gelatin, served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A New Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Grate the rind of the lemon and squeeze out the juice.

  2. In a bowl, combine the lemon juice, grated rind, vanilla, powdered sugar, whole eggs, and egg yolks.

  3. Beat the mixture for 20 minutes with a hand mixer.

Add the gelatine and set

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in 1 cup of water.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites to the mixture, then gradually add the gelatine while beating constantly.

  3. Pour the mixture into a glass dish and refrigerate until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with sweetened orange juice.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Whole eggs and yolks enrich the mixture and give it a creamy, custard-like body.
Egg whites
Beaten whites add air and lightness, giving the dessert a fluffy texture.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a soft, sliceable dessert once chilled.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and dissolves easily into the eggs without grittiness.
Lemon
Its juice and rind provide acidity and bright citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Adding the gelatine while beating. Gelatine must be added gradually while beating constantly so it disperses evenly. Poured in at once or left unstirred, it can form lumps or streaks and the dessert may set unevenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blueberryfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vanilla, sugar, egg, orange. 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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