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Dessert

Russian Jelly

A gelatinous pineapple dessert made with sherry, lemon, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pineapple and sherry work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 228 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Russian Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Pound the pineapple and sugar together.

  2. Put the mixture in a saucepan with the water and lemon rind, and boil for 20 minutes.

Set the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in a little cold water, then strain the saucepan contents over it.

  2. Add the sherry and lemon juice.

Finish and colour

  1. When the mixture is cold but not set, add the egg white and whisk until frothy.

  2. Divide the mixture into three parts and color one part green, one part red.

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. Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Pineapple + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

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

  3. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the fruit and lemon.
Pineapple
Provides the main fruit flavour and body to the syrup.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that lift the sweet pineapple flavour.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a warm, fortified flavour to the jelly.
Egg white
Whisked to a froth, it adds an airy, lighter texture to the jelly.

The step that matters

Adding the egg white. The mixture must be cold but not yet set. If it is still hot, the egg white will cook and scramble; if it has already set, it will not whisk into a light froth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar, sherry, 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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