Skip to main content
Dessert

Florida Orange Jelly

A gelatinous preserve made from Florida oranges, lemons, sugar, water, and gelatine.

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 ↓

Florida Orange Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Grate the yellow rind of the oranges and lemons.

  2. Squeeze the juice of the grated fruits into a porcelain-lined preserving kettle, removing all seeds.

Make the syrup

  1. Add the sugar and water to the kettle.

  2. Boil the mixture until a rich syrup forms.

Set the jelly

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in warm water over low heat, stirring until fully dissolved.

  2. Add the syrup to the dissolved gelatine.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Cool the jelly in molds that have been wet with cold water.

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

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

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

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

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

Gelatine
Provides the gel structure that sets the liquid into a firm jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the tartness of the citrus juice.
Oranges
Supply the main juice and aromatic flavour from their rind and juice.
Lemons
Add acidity and extra aroma that brighten the jelly's flavour.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully over low heat. Gelatine must dissolve completely without boiling; overheating weakens its gelling power, and undissolved granules leave a grainy, weak-setting jelly.

“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.

You might also like

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