Name: Jelly From Gelatine
Ingredients: 1 (2 ounce) package of gelatine; 1 pint cold water; 1½ pounds sugar; juice of 4 lemons; orange peel (optional); stick cinnamon (optional); 3 pints boiling water

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Jelly From Gelatine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

Soak the gelatine in cold water for 1 hour.
Add sugar, lemon juice, orange peel, and cinnamon to the soaked gelatine.
Pour 3 pints of boiling water over the mixture and strain through a jelly bag or coarse towel.

Set

Pour the strained mixture into molds and set aside to cool.
In warm weather, use a little more gelatine.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon 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: Provides the gel structure that sets the liquid into a firm jelly.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and body to the jelly.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.

“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.