Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Fruit Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with lemon juice, sugar, water, citrus peel, citron, and fruit slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Lemon Fruit Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemonade base

  1. Make a rich lemonade by mixing lemon juice, sugar, and water.

  2. Add small slices of citron and the yellow parts of lemon and orange peel.

  3. Heat the mixture and add the dissolved gelatine.

Layer and set

  1. Pour one-third of the mixture into moulds and arrange slices of orange, banana, and pineapple in it.

  2. Let it partially set, then add another third and arrange fruit as before.

  3. Pour in the remaining mixture and let it stand on ice overnight.

  4. In very hot weather, use a little more gelatine.

Unmould

  1. To remove from moulds, dip in hot water for just an instant.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Banana + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together733 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + bananatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Lemon + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

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 jelly that holds its shape when unmoulded.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sourness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Provides the main acidity and lemon flavour of the jelly.
Citron
Adds aromatic flavour and a bit of texture from the small slices.

The step that matters

Layering the fruit between partial sets. Each third must be only partly set before the next is poured, so the fruit stays suspended in place instead of sinking or floating. Gelatine that is too firm will not bond the layers, and too liquid a layer lets the fruit drift.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, banana, pineapple. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes