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Dessert

Claret Jelly

A wine-based jelly made with claret, lemon juice, red currant jelly, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and lemon work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 309 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Claret Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a pan, combine water, sugar, gelatine, and lemon rind. Stir until dissolved.

  2. Add lemon juice, claret, and red currant jelly.

Clarify and strain

  1. Whisk the egg whites to a froth and crush the shells, then add to the mixture.

  2. Simmer for 5 minutes without stirring, then strain through a hot jelly bag.

Set

  1. Do not use a metal mold for this jelly to preserve its color.

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. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, 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

Leaf gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Bind to impurities as they heat, so straining leaves the jelly clear.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the jelly body.
Claret
Provides the main wine flavour and deep red colour.
Red currant jelly
Adds fruit flavour and extra gelling power from its natural pectin.

The step that matters

Simmer without stirring, then strain through a hot jelly bag. Egg whites coagulate and trap cloudy particles as they heat. Stirring breaks up this raft and lets impurities pass through, so the jelly stays clear when strained through a hot bag.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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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