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Dessert

Gelatine Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with calf's foot gelatin, sugar, lemon, egg whites, egg shells, sherry, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,273 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Gelatine Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

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

Make the jelly

  1. In a saucepan, combine the soaked gelatine, boiling water, sugar, whipped egg whites, crushed egg shells, lemon rind, lemon juice, and sherry.

  2. Whisk the mixture until it boils.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 10 minutes to clear.

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

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 + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 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. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Calf's foot gelatine
Provides the gel structure that sets the liquid into a firm jelly.
Egg whites
Whipped whites are used in clearing, helping trap impurities so the jelly becomes clear.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon and sherry.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma from the juice and rind.
Sherry
Adds flavour and aroma to the finished jelly.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand to clear. Egg whites and shells must be allowed to settle after boiling so they can bind impurities; if the jelly is strained too early, it stays cloudy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, sherry. 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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