Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberry Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made from strawberries, sugar, lemon, egg whites, and lemon jelly.

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

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup and fruit

  1. Boil the sugar and 1 pint of cold water to make a syrup.

  2. Once cool, pour the syrup over the crushed strawberries and let sit for 30 minutes.

Prepare the mold

  1. Coat a mold with a thin layer of lemon jelly and decorate with whole strawberries.

Make and set the jelly

  1. Place the gelatine in a stewpan with 1 pint of water and dissolve it over heat.

  2. Add the strawberry mixture and lemon juice to the dissolved gelatine.

  3. Whisk the egg whites and shells, then add to the mixture and whisk until boiling.

  4. Strain through a jelly bag until clear and pour into the prepared mold.

  5. Let it set in a cool place or on ice until firm.

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

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Strawberries
Provide the main flavour and colour of the jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the tartness of the fruit and lemon.
Eggs
Whites and shells are whisked in to clarify the jelly, collecting impurities for a clear result.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavour.

The step that matters

Whisking in the egg whites and shells. The whites must be fully whisked into the hot mixture and brought to a boil, then left to settle. Egg proteins coagulate and trap cloudy particles, which is what makes the strained jelly clear. Straining too early leaves it cloudy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes