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Dessert

Cherry Gelatine

A chilled dessert made from cherry juice, gelatine, sugar, lemon juice, and canned cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cherry and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,301 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cherry Gelatine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Add the boiling water, cherry juice, sugar, and lemon juice to the soaked gelatine.

  3. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into molds and add the canned cherries.

  2. Set the molds on ice to chill.

  3. 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. Cherry + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Cherry + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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, sliceable gel as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemon and cherry juice.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavor and sharpens the cherry taste.
Cherry juice
Provides the main liquid and the cherry flavor and color.
Canned cherries
Add fruit pieces and chewy texture suspended in the gel.

The step that matters

Soak the gelatine fully before adding hot liquid. Gelatine must hydrate in cold water so its protein strands can dissolve evenly in the hot liquid. Skipping or shortening the soak can leave lumps or weak setting.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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