Skip to main content
Dessert

Wine Jelly

Wine Jelly is a gelatin dessert made with wine, lemon juice, lemon peel, cinnamon, egg whites, sugar, gelatin, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Wine Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water.

  2. Prepare a flannel bag by dipping it in clean hot water before use.

Make the jelly

  1. Combine the gelatin, water, lemon juice, grated lemon peel, cinnamon, egg whites, and sugar in a pot.

  2. Heat the mixture over medium heat, stirring often to prevent sticking.

  3. Boil for about 5 minutes.

Strain and finish

  1. Strain the mixture through the bag, adding the wine after straining for better flavor.

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. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cinnamon + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a clear, firm jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Collect impurities as they cook, helping clarify the jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly its body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Wine
Adds the main flavor and aroma to the finished jelly.

The step that matters

Strain through the flannel bag. Egg whites clump and cloud the liquid as it heats, and the flannel bag must be clean and hot so the jelly runs clear rather than cloudy. Straining slowly lets the captured particles stay behind, giving a bright, clear set.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, cinnamon, egg, sugar, wine. 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 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes