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Dessert

Port Wine Jelly

A gelatin dessert made from port wine, lemon, egg whites, sugar, and optional color.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Port Wine Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Combine the sugar, port wine, and gelatine in a pan. Stir until dissolved.

  2. Add the thinly pared rind and strained juice of the lemons, along with the whipped egg whites. Whisk well.

  3. Simmer gently for 5 minutes without stirring.

  4. Pour the mixture through a jelly bag rinsed in hot water.

Set and serve

  1. Once cool, pour into a china mold to set.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Port wine + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

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

  5. Port wine + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 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

Port wine
Provides the main flavor and liquid that the gelatine sets into a jelly.
Egg whites
Whipped whites help clarify the liquid as they coagulate and are strained out with the impurities.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma from the juice and pared rind.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the acidity of the lemon and wine.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without stirring. Stirring can break up the egg white raft that forms as it heats, so it stays clumped and fails to clarify the liquid. Gentle simmering lets the whites collect impurities so the jelly strains clear.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, egg, 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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