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Dessert

Port Wine Jelly

A jelly made by dissolving gum arabic, sugar candy, and isinglass in port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Port wine and sugar work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 805 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Port Wine Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Put all ingredients into a jar.

  2. Stand the jar in a saucepan of water.

  3. Keep it simmering until all is dissolved.

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. Port wine + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together805 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Isinglass
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Gum arabic
Adds body and helps keep the jelly smooth and stable.
Sugar candy
Adds sweetness and rounds out the flavour of the wine.
Port wine
Provides the main liquid, colour and flavour of the jelly.

The step that matters

Keep it simmering until all is dissolved. Gentle heat in a water bath dissolves the isinglass and gum slowly without scorching the wine or sugar. Boiling hard can break down the gelling power and cloud the jelly.

“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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