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Dessert

Strawberry Jelly

A fruit jelly made from mashed strawberries, currant jelly, water, lemon juice, sugar, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and gelatin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Strawberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jelly

  1. Mash the strawberries in a basin with a wooden spoon.

  2. Stir in the currant jelly until well combined.

  3. Add the cold spring water and lemon juice.

  4. Sweeten with sugar to your taste.

  5. Add the isinglass while the mixture is cool, without letting it congeal.

Strain and set

  1. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag two or three times until clear.

  2. Set the jelly in ice to cool.

  3. Garnish with strawberries when serving.

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 + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  5. Lemon + gelatintop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,215 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

Lemon and sugar 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

Scarlet strawberries
Provide the main flavour and colour of the jelly.
Currant jelly
Adds extra fruit flavour and body to the mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and flavour.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the liquid into a jelly.

The step that matters

Adding the isinglass. Isinglass must be added while the mixture is cool but still liquid. If it is too hot, the gelling agent can lose strength, and if the mixture has already begun to congeal, it will not blend evenly and the jelly may set unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, gelatin. 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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