Skip to main content
Dessert

Hartshorn Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from boiled hartshorn, water, wine, sugar, egg whites, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Hartshorn Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Boil hartshorn in water over gentle heat until it becomes jelly.

  2. Strain while hot into a well-tinned saucepan.

  3. Add Rhenish wine and loaf sugar, then beat in egg whites until frothy.

  4. Stir mixture well and boil for 2–3 minutes.

  5. Add lemon juice and boil for 1–2 minutes longer until curdled and white.

Clarify and serve

  1. Pour jelly into a swan-skin jelly bag over a bowl and strain until clear.

  2. Fill glasses with jelly using a spoon, adding lemon rind for 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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 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

Hartshorn
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Foam when beaten and coagulate on boiling, collecting impurities so the jelly clears.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and, by curdling the egg whites, helps the jelly clear.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the lemon's acidity.
Rhenish wine
Adds body and flavor to the jelly.

The step that matters

Straining through the jelly bag until clear. Egg whites must be boiled until they curdle so they trap cloudy particles; rushing the straining or disturbing the bag lets cloudiness pass through, leaving the jelly hazy rather than clear.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes