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Dessert

Tutti Frutti Jelly

A gelatin dessert with fruit pieces and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Tutti Frutti Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Add boiling water and sugar, stirring until dissolved.

  3. Add lemon juice and strain into a bowl or pitcher.

Layer and set

  1. When it begins to cool, rinse a jelly mold with cold water.

  2. Slice half a banana and place it in the bottom of the mold.

  3. Add a few strawberries or raspberries, then pour some jelly over it.

  4. Place the mold in a pan of chipped ice to harden quickly.

  5. Once it stiffens, add more fruit and jelly, repeating until all is used.

Serve

  1. To serve, turn out onto a dish and decorate with cherries or berries.

  2. Serve plain or with whipped cream or thin boiled custard.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Banana + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Orange + figtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

  4. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Forms the gel structure that holds the jelly and fruit together when chilled.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the tartness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and sharpens the sweetness.
Strawberries or raspberries
Add fresh fruit flavour and moisture to the layers of jelly.

The step that matters

Place the mold in a pan of chipped ice to harden quickly.. Chilling the jelly quickly helps it set firmly before the next layer is added, so the fruit stays suspended and the layers do not blur together.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, banana, orange, fig, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, banana, orange, fig, cream. 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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