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Dessert

Claret Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made with claret wine, sugar, lemon, and brandy.

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 ↓

Claret Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Combine soaked gelatine, sugar, and lemon in a bowl.

  3. Pour boiling water over the mixture and stir until melted.

  4. Add the claret and strain through double flannel without squeezing.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a wet mold and set in ice.

  2. Turn out onto a cold glass dish and serve with cake.

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. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Brandy + lemontop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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, wobbly jelly.
Claret
Gives the jelly its colour and wine flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the tartness of the wine.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the wine flavour.

The step that matters

Melting the gelatine fully before adding the claret. Gelatine only sets properly when it is completely dissolved. Undissolved granules leave soft or grainy spots in the finished jelly, so stir until no grains remain before adding the wine.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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