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Orange and Lemon Jelly

A clear jelly made from orange and lemon juice, isinglass, egg white, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Orange and Lemon Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Juice the oranges and lemons to yield 1-1.5 pints of juice.

Make the jelly

  1. Clarify the isinglass and add an additional ½ ounce.

  2. Beat the egg white slightly and mix with 1 pint of cold water.

  3. Whisk the egg white mixture for 1-2 minutes, then pour over the isinglass.

  4. Heat gently, stirring occasionally until scum forms, then boil for 2-3 minutes.

  5. Skim off the scum and strain the mixture through a muslin strainer.

  6. Wash the muslin in hot water, then cold, and rinse well before use.

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

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

  3. Orange + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Isinglass
Sets the juice into a firm jelly as it cools.
Egg white
Clarifies the liquid by trapping particles that rise as scum when heated.
Oranges
Provide the main juice, flavour and sweetness of the jelly.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour of the jelly.

The step that matters

Heat gently until scum forms, then boil. Heating slowly lets the egg white coagulate and gather impurities into scum rather than cloud the liquid. Rushing the heat can break up the scum, leaving the jelly cloudy, so it must be skimmed off cleanly before straining.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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