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Dessert

Claret Jelly

A jelly made with claret wine, sugar, gelatin, red currant jelly, brandy, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Claret Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. In a preserving pan, combine the sugar and gelatin.

  2. Pour the claret and brandy over the mixture and let it soak for 10 minutes.

  3. Carefully remove the rind from the lemon and add it to the pan along with the currant jelly.

  4. Place the pan over medium heat and stir until boiling.

  5. Reduce heat and let it simmer for 5 minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Dip a mold in cold water.

  2. Strain the jelly into the mold.

  3. Set the mold aside to cool.

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. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Red currant + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Brandy + lemontop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Sugar and lemon 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Red currant jelly
Adds fruit flavour, tartness and body to the set jelly.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the jelly and helps give it a clear, smooth set.
Claret
Provides the main wine flavour and liquid base for the jelly.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth that complements the wine.

The step that matters

Stir until boiling, then simmer gently. The gelatine must fully dissolve in the hot liquid before setting. Boiling briefly and then simmering gently dissolves it evenly, while a rolling boil for too long can weaken the set and cloud the clarity.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, red currant, brandy):

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Currantfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, red currant, brandy. 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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