1,525 easy and fully explained recipes, with +66K photos and 78 videos

Fruits which can ruin your jelly

There are many ways of making a fruit mousse, but one of the simplest is to prepare a fruit jelly (basically a fresh fruit coulis with gelatine) and then mix this jelly before it sets completely with whipped cream.

The result is perfect for filling a charlotte, for example.

But do beware; there are some fruits for which this will not work: kiwis, pineapple, mango and figs, in particular. You can add any amount of gelatine you like and the jelly will never set!

77 K 4.0/5 (32 reviews)

Keywords for this post:Jelly Gelatin Mousse Fruit Kiwi

Last modified on: March 6^th 2013

For this post: Comment Follow Ask me a question Send to a friend

Fruits which can ruin your jelly

And it can't set because these fruits contain enzymes called proteases, such as bromelain or papain, which prevent the gelatin from setting. So you cannot just make a straightforward kiwi or pineapple jelly.

Fortunately, science comes to the rescue and explains that it is possible to neutralise the effects of these bothersome proteases. We call this denaturing. All that is necessary is to heat the fruit to 60°C.
So, to make a pineapple jelly, for example, you simply need to heat the coulis over low heat to 60°C, add the gelatine, then leave to cool.

fruit gelatin

Even so, you should note that for a kiwi jelly, you should take care not to overheat the coulis if you wish to preserve the lovely green colour of the fruit. If it is overheated, the colour will turn dull, then brown. A thermometer is essential to ensure that the right temperature is reached but not exceeded.

As a last resort, you can use another jelling agent, such as carragheen.

Lasts posts

Oven height

When we put a dish or cake in the oven, we naturally tend to put it on the middle shelf, and that's what we usually do. But in some cases, this position and height can be a little tricky, so let's find out why.
October 8^th 20251,2625

The importance of sieving

In recipes that use a fine powder (flour, powdered sugar, etc.), you'll often see the advice to sift before using it. To sift is to pass the powder in question through a sieve (a very fine strainer) before incorporating it into your recipe. It's often advice, but is it really useful?
September 3^rd 20256,7843

The grease spray

As soon as you have something in a recipe that sticks to the mold, the question always arises as to how difficult it is to remove from the mold. There's nothing more frustrating than breaking your cake when unmolding it, because part of it has stuck in the mold. The classic way to avoid this is...
August 26^th 20256,2285

Cake moulds

When we make a cake, or a cake of the same rectangular shape, we usually take out our usual mould and tell ourselves that the recipe is anyway "for a cake", but is it really that simple?
August 25^th 20256,3325

Thinning out herbs

If you need to add a long-stemmed herb (tarragon, mint, verbena, thyme, etc.) to a recipe, you'll probably only need the leaves and not the stem, so you'll need to remove the leaves. Leaf removal means keeping only the beautiful leaves, and eliminating the ugly stems and leaves, but how do you do...
August 8^th 20254,4765

See all posts Random post RSS feeds

Other pages you may also like

Kitchen ovens

You certainly have one in your kitchen, an oven, the essential tool for all kinds of cooking, whether in the kitchen of course, but also in pastry, bakery, pizza, and many others. Here is some information on its structure and operation.
May 16^th 202033 K4.4

The beautiful story of the croissants

As you may have already noticed, cooking, baking and pastry-making are full of stories or legends, usually very romantic, about this or that product or recipe. This is often the case for named recipes, for example tarte tatin, peach melba, paris-brest and many others, but it also applies to very...
October 10^th 201819 K5

The so-called "nervous" meats

You've probably heard this before, we're talking about "nervous" meat, or meat with nerves, to describe what is indicated by the blue arrow on the left. This is a piece of beef, and what we call a nerve is not a nerve, it is in fact collagen (chemists sometimes call it a "collagen sink"), a...
April 16^th 202135 K4.5

Perpetual stock

It's something you have probably have done yourself: cooked or pre-cooked vegetables before adding them to a recipe. This is almost always done the same way: peel the chosen vegetables (carrots, for example), cut them up, boil them in salted water (using a tablespoon or so of coarse salt per litre),...
November 22^th 201630 K5

Is it really necessary to cream egg yolks?

Let’s try and answer a question that crops up in cookery and patisserie, even if it verges on the existential: do the egg yolks in a custard recipe really need to be beaten until pale, or not?
February 28^th 201843 K4.3