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Salad

Lettuce Salad with Tomato Jelly

A lettuce salad topped with tomato jelly, mayonnaise, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Lettuce Salad with Tomato Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato jelly

  1. Fry the carrot, onion, thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns, and celery in butter.

  2. Add the can of tomatoes, season with salt and pepper, and let simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture and add ⅓ of a box of gelatine to each pint of liquid.

  4. Soak the gelatine in ¼ cup of cold water until dissolved, then stir into the tomato mixture.

  5. Strain again through a jelly strainer and pour into small cups to mold.

Serve

  1. Serve each mold on a bleached lettuce leaf with 1 tablespoon of mayonnaise and chopped walnuts.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lettuce + walnuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main flavour and liquid that the gelatine sets into a jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the strained tomato liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly that holds its mold shape.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and fat to balance the sharp, acidic tomato jelly.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty contrast to the soft jelly.

The step that matters

Straining the mixture after the gelatine is added. Gelatine must be fully dissolved and the mixture strained clear so the jelly sets smooth and transparent, without lumps or bits of solids that would disrupt its texture.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, carrot, onion, thyme, celery, pepper, lettuce):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, carrot, onion, thyme, celery, pepper, lettuce. 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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