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Cranberry Jelly

A sweet preserve made by stewing cranberries with sugar, thickened with isinglass jelly or ground rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cranberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Stew the cranberries with their weight in sugar in a jar.

  2. Press the cranberries to extract juice.

  3. Strain the juice.

Set the jelly

  1. Add half the quantity of very stiff isinglass jelly to the juice and boil together.

  2. Strain into a mold.

  3. Alternatively, mix ground rice gradually into the sweetened juice until it thickens to a jelly.

  4. Boil gently until quite thick.

  5. Pour into a mold without straining.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream or custard.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + ricetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

  3. Rice + syruptop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cranberries
Provide the tart juice that forms the base of the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and balances the cranberries' sharp acidity.
Isinglass
Acts as a setting agent, forming a firm gel as the juice cools.
Ground rice
Thickens the sweetened juice through its starch, giving a jelly-like body.

The step that matters

Boil gently until quite thick.. Gentle boiling concentrates the juice and lets the thickener dissolve evenly. Boiling too hard can break up the setting structure and leave the jelly uneven or weak.

“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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