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Dessert

Amber Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with egg yolks, sherry or Marsala, lemon juice, water, sugar, gelatine, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,273 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Amber Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. In a saucepan, combine the egg yolks (or whole eggs), sherry (or Marsala), lemon juice, water, castor sugar, gelatine, and lemon rind.

  2. Whisk the mixture until it is almost boiling, but do not let it boil.

  3. Strain the mixture and pour it into dariole moulds that have been rinsed with cold water.

Serve

  1. To serve, carefully turn out the jelly from the moulds.

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. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Lemon and sugar 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

Egg yolks or whole eggs
Help the jelly set and give it a rich, body-building structure as they cook.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Sherry or marsala
Adds aroma and depth of flavour to the jelly.

The step that matters

Whisk until almost boiling, not boiling. Egg proteins can scramble and curdle if overheated, and boiling can weaken the gelatine's setting power. Heating gently and stopping just short of a boil keeps the mixture smooth and clear enough to set well.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sherry, sugar. 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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