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Dessert

Cranberry Jelly

A jelly made from cranberries, sugar, isinglass or ground rice, boiled and set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cranberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Stew the cranberries in a jar with their weight in sugar.

  2. Press and strain the juice.

Set the jelly

  1. Add half the quantity of very stiff isinglass jelly to the juice and boil together.

  2. Strain into a mold.

  3. Alternatively, mix ground rice gradually into the sweetened juice until it thickens to a jelly.

  4. Boil gently until quite thick and pour into a mold without straining.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream or custard.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Sugar + ricetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cranberries
Provide the tart flavor and the color of the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and balances the cranberries' tartness.
Isinglass jelly
Sets the strained juice into a firm jelly as it cools.
Ground rice
Thickens the sweetened juice so it sets into a jelly.

The step that matters

Boil gently until quite thick. The jelly firms only as it cools, so a juice that is not boiled down enough stays loose and may not set in the mold. Adding the thickener gradually, as the record directs, helps it blend evenly without lumps.

“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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