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Dessert

Bohemian Jelly Creams

A dessert made of cream, lemon, sugar, isinglass, whipped cream, raspberries, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and gelatin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Bohemian Jelly Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream base

  1. Pass the cream through a fine sieve.

  2. Add the lemon juice and sugar to the cream.

  3. Stir in the dissolved isinglass until the mixture begins to set.

Fill and layer

  1. Fill your mold with the mixture.

  2. Layer in whipped cream, raspberries, and currants as desired.

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. Cream + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  5. Lemon + curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Cream
Forms the rich, creamy body of the set dessert.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the lemon.
Isinglass (gelatin)
Sets the liquid cream into a firm, sliceable mold.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the cream.

The step that matters

Stir in the dissolved isinglass until the mixture begins to set. Gelatin-type setting agents begin to gel as they cool, so the mixture must be stirred in evenly and poured into the mold before it thickens too much, or the texture will be lumpy and the layers will not hold together.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, lemon, 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.

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