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Dessert

Wine Jelly with Whipped Cream

A gelatin dessert made with wine, lemon, sugar, and topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Gelatin and cream match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Wine Jelly with Whipped Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatin in 2 cups of cold water with the juice and rind of 1 lemon.

  2. Add 3 pints of boiling water, 4 cups of sugar, and 1 pint of sherry wine.

  3. Strain the mixture into molds.

Make the cream and serve

  1. Whip 1 pint of cream until stiff.

  2. Sweeten the whipped cream.

  3. If the cream is not thick, dissolve 1 tablespoon of gelatin in a little cold water.

  4. Strain the dissolved gelatin into the cream before whipping.

  5. Whip the cream until stiff.

  6. Pour the whipped cream over and around the jelly after removing it from the mold.

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. Gelatin + creamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the tartness of the wine and lemon.
Sherry wine
Adds flavour and aroma to the jelly.
Cream
Whipped into a light topping that contrasts with the firm jelly.

The step that matters

Strain the dissolved gelatin into the cream before whipping. Gelatin added to cream before whipping helps it hold its shape and stay stiff, so the topping does not weep or slump over the jelly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, sugar, sherry, wine, cream. 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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