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Dessert

Jellied Fruit

A gelatin dessert made with fruit pieces and citrus juice.

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 ↓

Jellied Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water until dissolved.

  2. Pour hot water over the dissolved gelatine.

  3. Add the lemon juice, orange juice, and sugar to the mixture.

Set in the mold

  1. In a mold, layer the bananas, grapes, and small pieces of orange.

  2. Strain the liquid over the fruit and set to cool.

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

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

  3. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + grapetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,412 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 jelly that holds the fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the sharpness of the citrus juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the jelly.
Orange juice
Adds citrus flavour and liquid to the jelly base.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully before adding the juices. Gelatine only sets when it is completely dissolved and evenly distributed. Undissolved granules leave soft or grainy patches, and acidic juice added to gelatine that has not dissolved can weaken its setting.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Cranberryfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, sugar, 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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