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Dessert

Wine Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with wine, lemon, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Wine Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. In a large bowl, combine gelatine and cold water.

  2. Add lemon rind, lemon juice, cloves, cinnamon, and sugar.

  3. Let stand for 15 minutes.

  4. Stir in boiling water until gelatine and sugar dissolve.

  5. Strain the mixture.

  6. Add wine.

Set and chill

  1. Pour into moulds that have been wet with cold water.

  2. Cool the jelly.

  3. Refrigerate until firm.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Forms the gel network that sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps dissolve into the liquid to balance the lemon's tartness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Wine
Supplies the main flavour and liquid base of the jelly.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully. Gelatine must be completely dissolved in the hot liquid before straining and setting. Undissolved granules or lumps will leave the jelly grainy or weak-set, and the gel only forms properly once the protein is evenly dispersed.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, cinnamon, sugar, wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, cinnamon, sugar, wine. 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.

More wine jelly recipes

Port 43Arrowroot 13Constantia 6Madeira 6Apricot 3Lemon 3 See all 239 →

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