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Dessert

Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from calf's feet, citrus, eggs, spices, and raisin wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,498 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Boil 4 quarts of water with 3 scalded calf's feet until reduced by half.

  2. Remove the jelly from the fat and sediment.

  3. Mix in the juice of the Seville orange, lemons, lemon peels, egg whites, brown sugar, raisin wine, coriander seed, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves.

  4. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes without stirring.

  5. Strain the jelly through a flannel bag.

Colour and finish

  1. Mix a little jelly with ½ cup of water that has boiled with a piece of beetroot.

  2. Strain the garnish through the bag when the rest is done.

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 + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,498 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Coriander + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

  4. Orange + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's feet
Their collagen breaks down into gelatin, which sets the jelly.
Egg whites
As they cook they bind impurities, clarifying the jelly so it becomes clear.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that balance the sugar and spices.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour.
Raisin wine
Adds fruity aroma and depth of flavour to the jelly.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 minutes without stirring. The egg whites form a raft that gathers sediment as they cook. Stirring breaks this raft apart, so the sediment mixes back in and the jelly stays cloudy.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon, egg, sugar, wine, coriander, allspice):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, egg, sugar, wine, coriander, allspice. 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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