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Cranberry Jelly

A jelly made from cranberry juice, isinglass, sugar, lemon juice, egg whites, and crushed egg shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cranberry and lemon work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 210 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cranberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve isinglass in water.

  2. Press the cranberries.

  3. Add the isinglass jelly to the juice.

Clarify and set

  1. Stir in lemon juice, sugar, egg whites, and crushed shells.

  2. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain through muslin until clear.

  4. Fill the mould with the mixture.

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. Cranberry + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cranberry + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together374 recipes

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

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

Isinglass
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Coagulate when heated, gathering impurities so the jelly can be strained clear.
Cranberry juice
Provides the main liquid, flavour and tartness of the jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the cranberries.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the cranberry juice.

The step that matters

Simmer, then strain until clear. Egg whites coagulate as they heat and trap cloudy particles. Simmering them fully before straining lets these particles be caught, so the jelly sets clear rather than cloudy.

Swap the cranberry

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Cranberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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.

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