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Dessert

Gelatine Wine Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with wine, lemon, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Gelatine Wine Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Pour it into a saucepan with the boiling water and sugar, stirring until dissolved.

Clarify and set

  1. Add the wine, lemon juice and rind, egg white and shell, nutmeg, and cinnamon, then boil briskly for 30 seconds.

  2. Remove from heat, let it stand for 30 seconds, then skim and strain through a flannel jelly bag into a wet mould.

  3. Place the mould on ice to harden for 5 to 6 hours.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Forms the firm, wobbly gel structure once the liquid cools.
Egg white
Clarifies the liquid as it heats, trapping cloudy particles so the jelly runs clear.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aroma that flavour the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the wine and lemon.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aromatic oils from the rind.

The step that matters

Skimming and straining the hot liquid. Egg white must coagulate and trap impurities during the brief boil; skimming and straining through a flannel jelly bag remove them, so the jelly sets clear rather than cloudy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, sherry, wine, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, wine, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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