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Dessert

Oranges Jellied

A dessert made by filling orange skins with a gelatinous mixture of orange pulp, lemon juice, sugar, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Oranges Jellied

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Cut a hole in the top of each orange, large enough for a small spoon, and carefully remove all the juice and pulp.

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the lemon juice, orange pulp, sugar, gelatine, and cold water together for 30 minutes.

  2. Place the mixture in a saucepan, pour in the boiling water, and stir until well dissolved.

  3. Strain the mixture through a bag.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the orange skins with the mixture, put the tops back on, and set aside to cool and harden.

  2. The next day, cut each orange in half with a sharp knife and serve one half to each person.

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

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

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
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the sharpness of the citrus.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the jelly.
Oranges
Serve as the edible shell and supply the main citrus flavour.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine fully. Gelatine must be completely dissolved in hot liquid before straining and filling, otherwise undissolved granules will not set evenly and the jelly may come out grainy or weak.

“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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