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Tomato with Gelatine

A gelatin-set tomato dish served with lettuce and mayonnaise dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tomato with Gelatine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

Make the tomato base

  1. Drain the juice from the tomatoes and heat it in a saucepan.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and sugar to the tomato juice to taste.

  3. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat and skim off any foam.

  4. Add the soaked gelatine and lemon juice to the hot tomato juice and stir until dissolved.

  5. Strain the mixture and let it cool until it thickens slightly.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into prepared molds and refrigerate until set.

  2. Serve with lettuce and mayonnaise dressing.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  5. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 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

Gelatine
Sets the tomato juice into a firm, sliceable gel as it chills.
Tomatoes
Supply the main flavour and the juice that becomes the gel.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until it thickens slightly before molding. Gelatine sets as it cools. If the liquid is still very hot or fully set when poured, the gel may not hold its shape or may separate. Cooling it only until slightly thickened gives an even, firm set in the mold.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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