Skip to main content
Dessert

Jelly Making

A method for making fruit jelly from various fruit juices and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and quince work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Jelly Making

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Strain the fruit juice to remove pulp without using pressure.

  2. Measure the juice.

Boil and set

  1. Boil it rapidly in a clean preserving pan: raspberries for 5 minutes, currants/gooseberries for 8-15 minutes, plums/apples/quinces/strawberries for 20-25 minutes.

  2. Stir and skim the juice while boiling.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Stir in the bruised, heated sugar until dissolved.

  5. Boil the juice again for 2-20 minutes until it jellies strongly on a spoon.

  6. Pour the jelly into glasses or molds.

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. Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Plum + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Plum + quincetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together92 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Currant + plumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Quince + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fruit juice
Provides the liquid and the natural pectin and acid that let the jelly set.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps it set firmly as the juice boils down.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice again until it jellies. Setting depends on boiling long enough to concentrate the sugar and pectin. Too little boiling leaves the jelly runny, while too much can make it stiff or cloudy. Testing on a cold spoon shows when it is ready.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (currant, plum, apple, quince, sugar):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, plum, apple, quince, sugar. 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 fruit jelly recipes

Four 4Cake 4Mixed 4Molded 4Sauce 3 See all 123 →

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesQuince JellyQuince Jelly131 recipes