Skip to main content
Dessert

Tomato Jelly

A gelatinous tomato preserve made with tomatoes, spices, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 4,108 recipes mention both. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Tomato Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Combine tomatoes, bay leaf, cloves, onion, thyme, pepper, salt, and sugar in a pot.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes.

Set and unmould

  1. Soak gelatine in ½ cup water for 30 minutes.

  2. Dissolve the soaked gelatine in the tomato mixture just before removing from heat.

  3. Strain the mixture into a wet mold.

  4. To serve, wrap a warm towel around the mold and turn it out onto a serving dish.

  5. Garnish with lettuce leaves and asparagus tips, and serve with mayonnaise.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,370 recipes

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the strained tomato liquid into a firm jelly that holds its shape when unmoulded.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and liquid base of the jelly.

The step that matters

Dissolve the soaked gelatine in the tomato mixture just before removing from heat. Gelatine must fully dissolve but should not be boiled for long, since prolonged high heat weakens its gelling power. Adding it at the end, off the boil, lets it dissolve evenly so the jelly sets firm and clear.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Okrabetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, thyme, pepper, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

More tomato jelly recipes

Salad 39 See all 108 →

You might also like

Clove CakeClove Cake53 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes