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Dessert

Port Wine Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from port wine, water, sugar, gelatine, and red currant jelly, colored with cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and red currant work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Port Wine Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. In a saucepan, combine water, sugar, red currant jelly, and gelatine.

  2. Stir over low heat until dissolved.

  3. Add half of the port wine and a few drops of cochineal for color.

  4. Strain the mixture through a muslin or jelly bag.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the remaining port wine before serving.

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. Port wine + red curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Port wine + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 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
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Port wine
Gives the jelly its main flavour, deep colour and sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the wine's tartness.
Red currant jelly
Adds fruity flavour and extra body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully over low heat. Undissolved gelatine leaves specks and weak spots in the set jelly. Gentle heat dissolves it evenly, while boiling can weaken its setting power and dull the flavour of the wine.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, sugar. 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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