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Dessert

Fruit Gelatine

A gelatin dessert made with fruit pieces, sugar, lemon juice, and water.

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 Gelatine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

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

  2. Pour boiling water over the soaked gelatine and stir until dissolved.

  3. Add sugar and lemon juice, mixing well.

Assemble and set

  1. Layer the fruit pieces in a mold, sprinkling sugar over each layer.

  2. When the gelatine mixture is almost cool, pour it over the fruit and stir gently.

  3. Refrigerate until set.

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 + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + grapetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

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

  5. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Coxe's gelatine
Provides the gel structure that sets the mixture as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemon and fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Bananas
Add body and soft texture to the set gelatine.
Pineapple
Adds fresh fruit flavour and texture to the set gelatine.

The step that matters

Pour the gelatine when it is almost cool. Gelatine that is still very hot can soften the fruit and cause it to float or separate, while a nearly cool mixture stays evenly distributed and sets firmly around the pieces.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, banana, pineapple, grape. 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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