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Claret Jelly

A clear jelly made with claret wine, sugar, spices, and clarified with egg whites and shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Claret Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the gelatine in the water.

  2. Melt the gelatine in a saucepan with the sugar.

  3. Add the thinly peeled rind and strained juice of the lemons.

  4. Stir in the claret, mace, nutmeg, and cloves.

  5. Once the sugar is dissolved, add the egg whites and shells to clarify the jelly.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 jelly as it cools.
Egg whites and shells
Clarify the jelly by collecting cloudy particles as it heats.
Claret
Provides the main wine flavour and deep colour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon and wine.
Lemons
Add acidity and fragrant citrus oils from the rind.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites and shells. Egg whites must be whisked into the liquid and brought slowly to a simmer so they bind impurities and form a raft that clarifies the jelly. Adding them to liquid that is already boiling can scramble them and leave the jelly cloudy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, egg, lemon, nutmeg. 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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