Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Jelly

A gelatin dessert made from orange juice, sugar, water, orange rinds, gelatin, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 syrup

  1. Rub the lump sugar on the orange rinds.

  2. Boil the sugar, hot water, and the yellow part of the orange rinds.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Set the jelly

  1. Add the gelatin and stir until dissolved.

  2. Add the orange juice and lemon juice.

  3. Pour into a mold.

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. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Orange + gelatintop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

Sugar and lemon 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

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the citrus juices.
Orange juice
Provides the main orange flavour and liquid for the jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the orange.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin fully. Gelatin must be completely dissolved in hot liquid before the juices are added. Undissolved granules will not set evenly and leave a grainy or weak jelly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, gelatin. 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.

More orange jelly recipes

Seville 17Cake 13Florida 8Baskets 8Lemon 4China 3 See all 328 →

You might also like

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