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Dessert

Clear Lemon Jelly

A clear gelatin dessert made with lemon juice, water, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, gelatine, lemon rind, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Clear Lemon Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Combine all ingredients in a clean saucepan and whisk well.

  2. Place over moderate heat and whisk until nearly boiling.

  3. Remove the whisk and let the jelly boil until it rises to the top.

  4. Allow it to stand in a warm place until the scum cracks.

Clarify and set

  1. Set up a clean teacloth over two basins and pour boiling water through it.

  2. Strain the jelly through the cloth once or twice until clear.

  3. Pour into a wetted mold and refrigerate until set.

  4. For quicker setting in summer, use more gelatine.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Eggs
Whites whipped into the liquid trap impurities that rise as scum, helping clarify the jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly its body and mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity that gives the jelly its bright, tart flavour.
Lemon rind
Contributes aromatic lemon oils that flavour the jelly.

The step that matters

Strain through the cloth until clear. Boiling lets egg white and impurities rise as scum, which must be left to crack and then strained out. Rushing this or straining too roughly leaves the jelly cloudy rather than clear.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, clove, 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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