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Dessert

Orange Jelly

A jelly made with orange rind, juice, sugar, spices, and egg whites, thickened with lard shavings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Orange Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil lard shavings in 2 quarts of spring water until reduced to 1 quart.

  2. Pour off the liquid and let it cool.

  3. Combine ½ pint of spring water, orange rind, and orange juice; let sit overnight.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Make the jelly

  1. Melt the lard shavings and mix in the orange liquid and sugar to taste.

  2. Add mace, cloves, nutmeg, and lemon rind.

  3. Beat the egg whites to a froth and mix into the jelly.

Clear and finish

  1. Heat over a clear fire and boil for 3-4 minutes.

  2. Strain through a jelly bag several times until clear, being careful not to shake the bag.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  5. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Hartshorn shavings
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Coagulate when heated and trap particles so the jelly can be cleared.
Orange juice
Provides the main citrus flavour and acidity.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the orange juice.

The step that matters

Straining through the jelly bag. Shaking the bag pushes cloudy particles through the filter, so the jelly stays murky instead of clear. Letting it drip slowly keeps the clarified jelly bright.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, clove, nutmeg, lemon, 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.

More orange jelly recipes

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