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Dessert

Lemon Jelly

A sweet lemon dessert made with gelatin, water, lemons, sugar, wine or brandy, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Lemon Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquid

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in water.

  2. Add the juice of the lemons and the sugar.

Make the jelly

  1. Mix in the raisin wine or brandy and the egg white.

  2. Boil the mixture together.

Strain

  1. Strain through a jelly bag into a mould.

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 + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Lemons
Juice adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the lemon's sharpness.
Raisin wine or brandy
Adds a rich, fruity aroma and flavour.
Egg white
Coagulates when heated, trapping cloudy particles so the jelly clears.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture with the egg white. As the egg white heats, it coagulates and gathers cloudy particles, which the jelly bag then catches. Boiling too gently or straining too early can leave the jelly cloudy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, 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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