Skip to main content
Dessert

Wine, Jelly

A gelatin-based jelly flavored with lemon, cinnamon, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Wine, Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak gelatine in ½ cup of cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Boil cinnamon and thinly peeled lemon rind in 1 cup of water for 5 minutes.

Make the jelly

  1. Add dissolved gelatine and stir until clear.

  2. Remove from heat, then add sugar, lemon juice, and white wine.

Set and serve

  1. Strain into a mold and refrigerate until set.

  2. 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 + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + white winetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together560 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Cinnamon and sugar 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
Forms the gel network that makes the wine liquid set into a sliceable jelly.
White wine
Supplies the main flavour and liquid body of the jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the wine's acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances sweetness.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the infused liquid.

The step that matters

Remove from heat, then add sugar, lemon juice, and white wine.. Gelatine loses setting strength when it is boiled, so the dissolved gelatine should not be boiled. Removing the pan from heat before adding the wine also helps keep its delicate flavour and aroma intact.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonthe original

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

More wine jelly recipes

Port 43Arrowroot 13Constantia 6Madeira 6Apricot 3Lemon 3 See all 239 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes