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Tomato Jelly

A gelatinled tomato preserve made with tomatoes, onion, herbs, spices, vinegar, sugar, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,810 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Stew the canned tomatoes with onion, parsley, cloves, mace, and celery for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve and return the liquid to the fire.

  3. Add vinegar, sugar, salt, and paprika to the liquid.

Set the jelly

  1. Soften the gelatin in a little cold water.

  2. Stir the softened gelatin into the mixture until dissolved, but do not boil.

  3. Pour the mixture into a shallow pie tin and set on ice until firm.

Unmould and serve

  1. Place the tin in hot water briefly to loosen the jelly.

  2. Cut the jelly into heart shapes and remove from the dish.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and colour of the jelly.
Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the vinegar and tomato tang.

The step that matters

Stirring the gelatin in without boiling. Gelatin must be fully dissolved into the warm liquid but boiling can weaken its setting power and make the jelly less firm. Keeping the mixture just warm lets the gelatin thicken evenly as it chills.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, parsley, clove, celery, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  3. Allspicebetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, parsley, clove, celery, vinegar, 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.

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