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Dessert

Port Wine Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from port wine, water, gelatin, sugar, spices, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Port Wine Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, combine ½ pint water, gelatine, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, lemon rind, and beaten egg whites with shells.

  2. Whisk until it boils, then remove from heat and add the port.

  3. Strain the mixture through a cloth.

Flavour, set and serve

  1. Dissolve the red currant jelly in the remaining ½ pint water and add it to the strained mixture.

  2. Color with cochineal as desired.

  3. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until firm.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Clove + red curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together128 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

Port
Provides the main wine flavour and the deep colour of the jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Coagulate as they heat, trapping sediment so the jelly can be strained clear.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the wine's tartness.
Red currant jelly
Adds fruity sweetness and body to the flavour.
Lemon rind
Adds a bright citrus aroma to the infused liquid.

The step that matters

Whisk until it boils, then strain through a cloth. As the egg whites heat, they coagulate and trap cloudy particles. Straining through a cloth removes them, leaving a clear jelly. Stirring too hard can break up the raft and cloud the result.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, cinnamon, lemon, 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.

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