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Dessert

Lemon Gelatine

A gelatin dessert made with lemon and orange juice, sugar, egg whites, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Lemon Gelatine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water until soft.

  2. In a pan, combine the lemon juice, orange juice, and sugar.

Make the mixture

  1. Add the dissolved gelatine and beaten egg whites to the pan.

  2. Pour in the boiling water and stir until the gelatine is completely dissolved.

Set

  1. Strain the mixture and pour it into a mold to cool.

  2. Optionally, slice oranges, lemons, and bananas, sweeten them, and pour the gelatine mixture over the fruit before allowing it to harden.

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

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Gelatine
Provides the gel structure that sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable dessert.
Lemons
Adds sharp acidity and fresh lemon flavour that balances the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and balances the sharpness of the citrus juice.
Egg whites
Help clarify the liquid by trapping fine particles, which are then strained out.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine completely. Gelatine must fully dissolve in the hot liquid, or undissolved granules will leave gritty, uneven spots and weaken the set. Stirring until no grains remain ensures an even, smooth gel.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

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

More lemon gelatin recipes

Dessert 21Pudding 16Orange 5Cream 4Jelly 4Custard 3 See all 39 →

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