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Dessert

Wine Jelly

A sweet jelly made with lemon juice, sugar, sherry wine, and optional berries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Wine Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. In a large bowl, combine sugar, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture and stir until dissolved.

  3. Add sherry wine and mix well.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine cloth into molds that have been dipped in cold water.

Set the jelly

  1. Refrigerate for several hours until set.

Layer and fill

  1. Pour a small amount of jelly into the mold and let it set slightly.

  2. Add a layer of fresh fruit.

  3. Add more jelly.

  4. Repeat until the mold is full.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and adds body to its set texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the jelly.
Sherry wine
Adds wine flavour and aroma to the jelly.

The step that matters

Let each jelly layer set slightly before adding fruit. The jelly needs to be partly firm so the fruit stays where it is placed. Pouring over a layer that is still liquid lets the fruit sink and the layers blend together.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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