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Dessert

Orange Jelly

A sweet gelatin dessert made from orange and lemon rind and juice, sugar, water, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Orange Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Grate the rind of the oranges and lemons into a kettle.

  2. Squeeze in the juice of the oranges and lemons.

  3. Add 1 cup of water and ½ pound of sugar for each pint of juice.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil until a rich syrup forms.

Set the jelly

  1. Dissolve 1 ounce of gelatin in 1 pint of warm water.

  2. Add the syrup to the gelatin mixture.

  3. Strain the jelly and pour it into glasses.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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 once cooled.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps give the syrup body and a rich texture.
Oranges
Provide the main juice and fragrant oil from the rind for flavour.
Lemons
Add acidity that balances the sweetness and sharpens the flavour.

The step that matters

Add the syrup to the gelatin mixture. Gelatin must be fully dissolved in warm water before the hot syrup is added, otherwise it can clump and fail to set evenly. The mixture should be well stirred and kept warm enough to stay liquid until it is poured into glasses.

“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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