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Dessert

Cranberry Jelly

A preserved fruit spread made from cranberry juice, sugar, and egg whites, cooked with water, herbs, and citrus rinds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cranberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly base

  1. Simmer hartshorn shavings with water until reduced by half.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Boil the strained mixture with the orange and lemon rinds.

Finish and strain

  1. When cold, add the juice of the oranges and lemons, sugar, and beaten egg whites.

  2. Let the jelly boil three to four times without stirring.

  3. Strain the jelly through a jelly bag.

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. Orange + cranberrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together230 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Lemon + cranberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Hartshorn shavings
Provides the gelling agent that sets the liquid into a firm jelly.
Whites of eggs
Help clarify the jelly, collecting impurities so it strains clear.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the set jelly its body.

The step that matters

Let the jelly boil three to four times without stirring. Stirring during the boil can break up the egg white clarifying mass and cloud the jelly, so it should be left undisturbed while it rises and boils.

Swap the cranberry

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Cranberrythe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

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