Name: Orange Jelly in Baskets
Ingredients: 463 eggs; juice and grated rind of 1 lemon; sugar to taste; 1 tablespoon gelatine; 1 pint boiling water; fruit of choice; 2 egg whites; cold water for rinsing moulds

Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and 53,532 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Orange Jelly in Baskets

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine eggs, lemon juice, grated rind, and sugar.
Dissolve gelatine in 1 pint of boiling water in a 2-quart saucepan.
Pour half of the gelatine mixture over the egg mixture and stir briskly.
Combine this back into the remaining gelatine, stirring quickly.
Set the mixture over boiling water and stir until thickened like custard, but do not boil.
Remove from heat and cool until thick like batter.
Beat egg whites to stiff peaks and fold into the jelly mixture along with the fruit.
Rinse 2 pint moulds with cold water and fill with the mixture.
Place the moulds on ice to harden.
Turn out onto cut paper and serve very cold with cream or whipped cream sauce.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together44,316 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar share little aroma chemistry, yet 53,532 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

Vanillabetter flavor fit
Raisinabout as good a flavor fit
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).