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Dessert

A Nice Dessert

A fruit gelatin dessert with walnuts, served with a sweet walnut sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Nice Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in ½ pint of cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Add ½ pint of boiling water to the soaked gelatin and stir until dissolved.

  3. Squeeze the lemon juice into the mixture and sweeten to taste.

  4. Pour the gelatin mixture over the sliced fruit and walnuts.

  5. Serve with cream or boiled custard.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine 1 cup powdered sugar and ½ cup creamed butter in a bowl.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon vanilla and gradually mix in 1 cup sweet milk.

  3. Set the bowl in a basin of hot water and stir until the sauce is creamy.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Banana + peartop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together87 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Gelatin + creamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Pear + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together190 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the dissolved liquid into a firm, sliceable dessert that holds the fruit.
Bananas
Add soft texture and natural sweetness to the set gelatin.
Walnuts
Add crunch that contrasts with the soft gelatin and fruit.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and gives it a smooth, fine texture.
Creamed butter
Adds richness and fat that makes the sauce smooth and creamy.
Sweet milk
Adds liquid and dairy richness that loosens the creamed butter and sugar into a sauce.

The step that matters

Set the bowl in a basin of hot water and stir until the sauce is creamy. Gentle warmth softens the butter so it blends smoothly with the sugar and milk. Overheating can melt the butter and separate the sauce, while insufficient stirring leaves it grainy.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, orange, pear, gelatin, lemon, sugar, cream):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, orange, pear, gelatin, lemon, sugar, cream. 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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