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Dessert

Egg Jelly

A gelatin-based dessert made with eggs, lemon, orange, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Egg Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in 1 pint of water.

  2. Add ½ pint of white wine, grated lemon peel, lemon juice, and orange juice.

  3. Beat the yolks of 7 eggs well and mix them into the mixture.

  4. Add white sugar to taste and simmer gently for a few minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. White wine + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together730 recipes

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

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

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

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

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a jelly once it cools.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture and add richness and a smooth texture.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharp citrus and wine.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour that cuts the richness of the yolks.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten yolks. Yolks can scramble and turn grainy if the hot mixture is too hot when they are stirred in. Mixing them in well, then simmering gently rather than boiling, keeps the custard-like texture smooth.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, white wine, lemon, egg, sugar. 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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