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Dessert

Cranberry Jelly

A gelatin-based jelly made from cranberry juice, sugar, lemon juice, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cranberry and lemon work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cranberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak gelatine in water overnight.

Make the jelly

  1. Stir cranberry juice, soaked gelatine, and sugar in a saucepan over heat.

  2. Add lemon juice and boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and beat egg whites until frothy.

  4. When jelly begins to settle, add egg whites and beat until spongy.

  5. If needed, add cochineal for color.

Set

  1. Pour into a wetted mold and refrigerate overnight.

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. Cranberry + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Cranberry + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together374 recipes

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

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 juice and sugar mixture into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped into the jelly to create a light, spongy texture and clarify the mixture.
Cranberry juice
Provides the main tart fruit flavor and liquid base of the jelly.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jelly and adds body to the set texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cranberry flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites as the jelly begins to settle. Egg whites must be beaten into the jelly at the right moment. Added too early, while the mixture is still hot, they can cook or deflate; added too late, they will not fold in to create a spongy texture.

Swap the cranberry

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Cranberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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