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Dessert

Pomegranate Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from pomegranate syrup, lemon, sugar, egg whites, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pomegranate and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 225 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pomegranate Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Extract seeds from enough pomegranates to yield 1 pint of syrup.

Clarify the jelly

  1. Combine the syrup, water, lemon juice, lemon rind, sugar, and slightly beaten egg whites in a pan.

  2. Heat gently, whisking until it boils.

  3. When scum rises, remove the whisk and cover the pan.

  4. Let it stand for 10 minutes.

  5. Warm a quart of boiling water in a jelly bag.

  6. Pour the jelly through the warm water until it is clear.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the clear jelly into a copper mold and set aside until firm.

  2. Dip the mold in warm water.

  3. Turn out the jelly quickly.

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. Pomegranate + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together225 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pomegranate + syruptop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Pomegranate syrup
Provides the main flavour and colour of the jelly.
Egg whites and shells
Bind impurities into scum when heated, so they can be removed to leave a clear jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the tartness of the lemon and pomegranate.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances sweetness.

The step that matters

Pour the jelly through the warm water until it is clear. Egg whites and shells trap cloudy particles as they coagulate, and the jelly must be strained slowly through a warm jelly bag to catch them. If the jelly is poured too fast or the bag is cold, the liquid stays cloudy and the set jelly looks murky.

Swap the pomegranate

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Pomegranatethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, 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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