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Tomato Jelly

A gelatinous tomato spread made by cooking tomatoes with spices, straining, and setting with gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomato base

  1. In a pot, stew the tomatoes with cinnamon, cloves, onion, bay leaf, salt, pepper, and vinegar until soft.

  2. Pass the cooked tomatoes through a sieve to remove seeds.

Set the jelly

  1. Dissolve Knox's Gelatine in cold water.

  2. Pour the hot tomato mixture over the dissolved gelatine and stir well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and place it on ice to set.

Serve

  1. Once cold, turn the jelly out onto a platter and garnish with crisp lettuce leaves.

  2. Serve with mayonnaise dressing or use the jelly as a garnish for cold meats.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and liquid that becomes the jelly.
Knox's gelatine
Sets the tomato liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the tomato flavour.
Onion
Adds savoury depth as it softens while the tomatoes stew.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully before combining. Gelatine must dissolve completely in the cold water, then be stirred into the hot tomato mixture thoroughly; undissolved granules leave gritty, unevenly set patches in the jelly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cinnamon, clove, pepper, vinegar. 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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