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Dessert

Jelly

A clear jelly made from stock sediment, sugar, raisin wine, lemon juice, egg whites, and shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Put the sediment into a saucepan with sugar, raisin wine, lemon juice, and lemon peel.

  2. Add the whites of the eggs and their broken shells.

  3. Heat the saucepan without stirring until it begins to warm.

Boil and strain

  1. Boil for 20 minutes after it rises to a head.

  2. Pour the mixture through a flannel jelly bag dipped in hot water and squeeze dry.

  3. Run the jelly through until clear.

  4. Add 1 cup of cold water to clarify, then boil for 5 more minutes.

  5. Cover and let it sit for 30 minutes before straining again.

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 + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Egg whites
Coagulate as they heat, trapping cloudy particles so the stock becomes clear.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly its set and body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and supports the gel.

The step that matters

Heating without stirring. Stirring while the mixture warms breaks up the egg white raft before it forms. The raft then traps the cloudy particles, so stirring at this point leaves the jelly cloudy.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine, 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.

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