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Dessert

Jelly

A lemon gelatin jelly flavored with cinnamon and cloves, made by boiling egg whites, lemon peel, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemon

  1. Squeeze and strain the lemon juice.

Make the jelly

  1. In a clean enamelled pan, combine egg whites, shells, lemon peel, strained juice, cinnamon, cloves, and sugar, then whisk the mixture together.

  2. Add gelatine and hot water, whisking until it boils.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes, then remove from heat and let stand for 5 minutes.

Strain and set

  1. Prepare a jelly bag by pouring 2 quarts of boiling water through it.

  2. Place two basins under the jelly bag to strain the jelly.

  3. Pour the jelly into the bag, switching basins as needed until the jelly is clear.

  4. Pour the clear jelly into a tin jelly mould and set aside to cool.

  5. Once set, dip the mould in hot water to loosen the jelly and turn it out.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Eggs
Egg whites and shells collect cloudy particles as the mixture boils, clarifying the jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the hot liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Lemon juice
Provides sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the lemon liquid.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic flavour to the jelly.

The step that matters

Boiling and standing before straining. Boiling the egg whites in the liquid makes them coagulate and trap cloudy particles, and standing lets them settle. Straining through the bag then gives a clear jelly, so the boil and rest must be completed before straining.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cinnamon, clove, 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.

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