Name: Jellies
Ingredients: ½ cup isinglass; 1 quart water; lemon juice to taste; wine to taste

Why it works: Lemon and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Jellies

Ingredients

½ cup isinglass
1 quart water
lemon juice to taste
wine to taste

Directions

Make the jelly

Boil the isinglass and water for 30 minutes.
Stir the mixture in a jug for about 10 minutes.

Flavour and set

Add lemon juice and wine to taste.
Pour into a quart mold and let it set until firm.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,157 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Isinglass: Dissolves into the water and sets as a gel, giving the jelly its firm structure.
Water: Dissolves the isinglass and forms the bulk of the jelly as it sets.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the jelly.
Wine: Adds flavour and aroma to the jelly.

“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.