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Dessert

Strawberry Jelly

A preserved strawberry confection made by boiling sugar and water, steeping strawberries, clarifying with isinglass, and setting in molds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar in water for 20 minutes.

  2. Pour the boiling syrup over the strawberries and let them stand overnight.

  3. Clarify the isinglass in a pint of water.

  4. Drain the syrup from the strawberries and add the red-currant juice and lemon juice.

Set and chill

  1. When the isinglass is nearly cold, mix everything together and add more sugar if desired.

  2. Pour the mixture into molds.

  3. Place the molds in an earthen pan and cover with crushed ice.

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

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

  2. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

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

Isinglass
Gelatin-like protein that sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly when cooled.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the syrup that is drawn from the strawberries.
Scarlet strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, colour and aroma of the jelly.
Red-currant juice
Adds tart acidity and a sharper fruit flavour to balance the sweetness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Add the isinglass when it is nearly cold. Isinglass sets as it cools. If the clarified isinglass is too hot, it can weaken the set and the jelly may not firm properly; if it is too cold, it may thicken unevenly and mix poorly with the fruit liquid.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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