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Dessert

Orange Jelly

A clear orange jelly made from orange juice, lemon juice, sugar, water, and optional sherry, thickened with cornflour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Rub the sugar on the outside of 3 oranges.

  2. Squeeze the juice of all 6 oranges and 2 lemons into a basin and strain.

  3. Add the sugar and water to the juice and mix well.

Set the jelly

  1. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  2. Thicken with corn-flour, using 1 tablespoon for every pint of liquid.

  3. Pour the hot mixture into a mould or basin.

  4. Once cold, turn it out onto ornamental paper in a dish.

Decorate

  1. Decorate the base with thin slices of orange and place an orange on top with green leaves.

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. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

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

  3. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  5. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Provide the main flavour and aromatic juice that gives the jelly its character.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the sweet orange flavour.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly body and a set texture.
Corn-flour
Thickens the liquid so it holds its shape when cold.

The step that matters

Thickening with corn-flour. Corn-flour must be fully dispersed and brought to a boil to thicken properly. Lumps or undercooked starch leave the jelly cloudy or grainy, and too much makes it stiff.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar, sherry, corn, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, sherry, corn, flour. 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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