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Dessert

Orange Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from orange rind, juice, hartshorn shavings, spices, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Orange Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hartshorn stock

  1. Boil 2 quarts of spring water with 1 pound of hartshorn shavings until reduced to 1 quart.

  2. Pour off the liquid and let it cool.

Infuse the orange

  1. Soak the orange rind and juice in ½ pint of spring water overnight.

  2. Strain the orange mixture through a fine sieve.

Make and clarify the jelly

  1. Melt the jelly.

  2. Mix in the orange liquid.

  3. Sweeten with double-refined sugar.

  4. Add mace, cloves, nutmeg, and lemon rind.

  5. Beat the egg whites to a froth.

  6. Mix the froth into the jelly.

  7. Heat the mixture over a clear fire.

  8. Boil for 3-4 minutes.

  9. Strain through jelly bags until clear, avoiding shaking.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hartshorn shavings
Provide the gelling agent that sets the liquid into a firm jelly.
Orange juice
Supplies the main flavour and acidity of the jelly.
Orange rind
Adds aromatic oils that deepen the citrus flavour when soaked.
Double-refined sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the orange acidity.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth and heated, they collect impurities so the jelly can be clarified.

The step that matters

Strain through jelly bags until clear, avoiding shaking. Shaking or pressing the bag pushes cloudy particles through, leaving the jelly hazy. Letting it drip slowly through the bag produces a clear set jelly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, clove, nutmeg, lemon, 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.

More orange jelly recipes

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