Name: Jelly
Ingredients: 4 cups fruit juice; ½ cup sherry; 1 tablespoon brandy; 1 clean napkin; 1 kitchen stool

Why it works: Sherry and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,209 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Pass the fruit juice through a clean napkin three or four times to clarify.
Add ⅓ cup of sherry and 1 tablespoon of brandy to the clear liquid.
Pour a little of the jelly mixture into a damp mold.
Place the mold in a cool place to set.

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.

Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,209 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Fruit juice: Forms the main liquid and carries most of the fruit flavor in the jelly.
Sherry: Adds its own wine flavor and aroma to the clear juice.
Brandy: Adds a warm, aromatic note to the jelly.

“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.