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Dessert

Tutti-frutti Jelly

Layered fruit jelly made with gelatin, lemon juice, sugar, bananas, oranges, and coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Tutti-frutti Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water.

  2. Dissolve the soaked gelatin in boiling water.

  3. Add lemon juice and sugar, then strain the mixture.

  4. When the mixture begins to thicken, layer jelly in a dish.

Layer and set

  1. Add a layer of sliced bananas, then another layer of jelly.

  2. Add a layer of sliced oranges, followed by more jelly.

  3. Top with grated coconut and finish with a final layer of jelly.

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. Banana + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Orange + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Lemon + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the jelly.
Sliced bananas
Add fruit flavour and soft texture between the jelly layers.
Sliced oranges
Add juicy sweetness and citrus aroma between the jelly layers.

The step that matters

Layer when the mixture begins to thicken. If the jelly is too liquid, the fruit sinks and layers mix; if it has set fully, new layers will not bond. Gelatine sets as it cools, so timing the layers at the thickening stage keeps the fruit suspended and the layers distinct.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Coconutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, banana, orange. 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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