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Salad

Tomato Aspic Salad

A chilled tomato aspic served on lettuce with mayonnaise and a walnut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Tomato Aspic Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the aspic

  1. Cook together the tomatoes, carrot, celery, and onion.

  2. Strain the mixture through cheesecloth.

  3. Add sugar, salt, and white pepper or paprika.

  4. Soak the gelatin in cold water.

  5. Add the gelatin to the mixture.

  6. Pour the mixture into individual molds.

  7. Refrigerate until set.

Serve

  1. Serve on lettuce leaves topped with mayonnaise and a walnut.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the strained tomato liquid into a firm, sliceable aspic.
Tomatoes
Provide the main flavour and liquid base of the aspic.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, carrot, celery, onion, sugar, gelatin, 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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