Why it works: Lemon and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,273 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓
Pyramid Wine Jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the jelly
Thinly cut the rind of the lemons without the white part.
In a pan, combine the lemon rind, gelatine, sugar, water, and lemon juice.
Whip the egg whites with about ½ cup of the water and add to the pan.
Slowly bring the mixture to a boil, allowing the scum to rise.
Cover and let it sit for a few minutes.
Place a linen towel over a sieve in a basin, pour boiling water through it, and discard the water.
Strain the jelly through the sieve until clear, repeating if necessary.
Add the wine to the clear jelly.
Color half of the jelly with a few drops of cochineal.
Set and stack
Pour the jellies into square shallow molds of graduated sizes.
Once set, dip the molds in warm water, turn out the jellies, and stack them to form a pyramid, alternating colors.
Optionally, place chopped jelly on top and around the pyramid.
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.
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Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,273 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,141 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Lemon and sugar 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
- Clarify the jelly by trapping impurities that rise as scum when boiled.
- Gelatine
- Sets the liquid into a firm jelly that holds the stacked shape.
- Castor sugar
- Sweetens the jelly and helps give it body.
- Lemon rind and juice
- Provides the tart citrus flavour that balances the sugar.
- Sherry or maraschino
- Adds aroma and flavour to the clear jelly.
The step that matters
Straining until clear. Any scum or particles left in the jelly cloud its appearance. Straining through a hot, towel-lined sieve after the egg whites have captured impurities gives the clear, glossy result the pyramid needs.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, sugar, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Pineapplefits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, sugar, 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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