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Dessert

Tomato Jelly

A chilled tomato gelatin made with canned tomatoes, gelatin, and seasonings.

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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the liquid from the can of tomatoes.

  2. Add the gelatine to the tomato juice.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, sugar, and lemon juice to taste.

Set

  1. Set aside until the mixture jellies.

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

Tomatoes
Supply the juice that becomes the jelly and the main tomato flavour.
Gelatine
Sets the tomato juice into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the tomato flavour.

The step that matters

Add the gelatine to the tomato juice. Gelatine must be fully dissolved in the liquid before it sets. Undissolved granules leave grainy specks and an uneven, weak set.

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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