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Dessert

Orange, or Lemon Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with orange wine, lemon essence, sugar, and citric acid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange, or Lemon Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ pint of cold water for 3 hours.

  2. In a large basin, combine the soaked gelatine, citric acid, and sugar.

  3. Pour in 1 pint of boiling water, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

  4. Add the cold orange wine and enough essence of lemon to flavor it nicely, then stir for a few minutes.

Mold and set

  1. Rinse the molds in cold water, leaving them wet.

  2. Pour in the jelly just as it is about to set.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Orange + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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
Forms the network that lets the liquid set into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the firmness of the set jelly.
Citric acid
Adds tartness that balances the sweetness and brightens the orange flavour.
Orange wine
Provides the main liquid and the orange flavour of the jelly.

The step that matters

Pour the jelly just as it is about to set. Gelatine sets as it cools and thickens. Pouring too early lets the jelly run out or sink, while pouring after it has set firmly leaves a lumpy, uneven layer that will not level in the molds.

“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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