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Dessert

Jelly

A clear gelatin dessert flavored with lemon, sweetened with sugar, and clarified with egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the stewpan with lemon juice and coarse sea salt, then rinse thoroughly.

  2. Soak the gelatine in water until soft.

Make and clarify the jelly

  1. Heat the mixture gently until the gelatine dissolves completely.

  2. Whip the egg whites until frothy.

  3. Add the egg whites to the mixture to clarify.

Strain and set

  1. Strain the jelly through a warm jelly-bag or cloth.

  2. Cool the jelly in a warm area.

  3. Keep it away from drafts.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Gelatine
Dissolves on heating and sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Trap impurities as they coagulate, clarifying the jelly into a clear liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour to the jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Add the egg whites to the mixture to clarify. Egg whites must be whipped and folded into the hot liquid so they can coagulate and collect cloudy particles. Stirring them in unevenly or letting the mixture boil hard can break up the clearing, leaving a cloudy jelly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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