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Dessert

Egg Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with egg yolks, sugar, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

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 ↓

Egg Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Dissolve the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in the water for about 10 minutes.

  2. Combine the soaked gelatine, sugar, lemon rind, and juice in a saucepan. Stir over low heat until the mixture is nearly simmering.

Thicken the custard

  1. Add the mixture to the beaten egg yolks in a bowl, stirring well, then return the mixture to the saucepan.

  2. Stir for a few seconds without boiling.

Set

  1. When nearly cold, strain into a mold that has 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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture and add richness when gently heated.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the lemon's sharpness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic lemon oils for fragrance.

The step that matters

Stir the yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but curdle and turn grainy if they get too hot. Keep the heat low and stir only until the custard thickens slightly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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