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Dessert

Fruit Jelly

A gelatin-based dessert made with lemon, oranges, bananas, grapes, figs, and walnuts.

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 ↓

Fruit Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Add boiling water and lemon juice to the gelatine mixture.

  3. Cut the fruit and walnuts into small pieces and stir them into the gelatine.

  4. Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until hard.

Serve

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

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

  2. Banana + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Grape + figtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together323 recipes

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

  4. Fig + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Banana + grapetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the fruit.
Oranges
Contribute juice and sweetness, adding moisture and flavour to the jelly.
Bananas
Add soft texture and natural sweetness to the set jelly.
Malaga grapes
Add juicy bursts of sweetness and moisture throughout the jelly.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty aroma that contrasts with the soft jelly.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine in cold water before adding boiling water. Gelatine must first hydrate in cold liquid so its proteins disperse evenly; adding it straight to hot liquid can leave lumps and weaken the set once chilled.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, banana, grape, fig, walnut):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, banana, grape, fig, walnut. 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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