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Dessert

Strawberry Jelly

A clear strawberry jelly made by crushing strawberries, infusing with sugar, straining, and setting with isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Strawberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Place strawberries in an earthen pan and crush them with a wooden spoon.

  2. Mix in the sugar and let it infuse for 1 hour to draw out the juice.

  3. Add water if necessary, and lemon juice if the strawberries are too sweet.

  4. Strain the mixture through a nearly new bag to obtain clear juice.

Set the jelly

  1. Mix the melted isinglass with the cold juice.

  2. Test the thickness by placing a small amount in a mould over ice.

  3. If thick enough, pour the mixture into a large mould over ice and cover with ice (no salt).

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).

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

Strawberries
Provide the flavour and colour, and the fruit pulp from which the juice is drawn.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw out juice from the crushed strawberries.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the cold juice into a jelly.

The step that matters

Testing the thickness over ice. Isinglass sets only as the juice cools, so a small test sample shows whether the mixture is thick enough before the whole batch is poured. Pouring too early leaves a runny jelly that will not hold its shape.

“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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