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Dessert

Fruit Jelly

A fruit jelly made with lemon, orange, grapefruit juices, gelatin, sugar, water, and sherry wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fruit Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Juice the lemon, oranges, and grapefruit.

  2. In a pot, combine the juices with enough cold water to make a scant quart of liquid and bring to a boil.

  3. Skim off any foam and let it cool.

Set and serve

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in the mixture and stir in the sherry wine.

  2. Pour the mixture into molds and refrigerate until set.

  3. Serve with whipped cream.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + grapefruittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + grapefruittop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the juice mixture into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the citrus juice and balances its acidity.
Citrus juices
Provide the main flavour and liquid base of the jelly.
Sherry wine
Adds aroma and a warm, fortified flavour to the citrus base.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine in the mixture. Gelatine must be fully dissolved in the warm, not boiling, liquid before setting; undissolved granules leave gritty spots and uneven firmness. Adding the sherry after the mixture has cooled helps preserve its aroma, which heat drives off.

Swap the grapefruit

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Grapefruitthe original
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, 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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