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Tomato Jelly

A chilled tomato gelatin made with celery, bay leaves, onion, salt, and lemon juice, served on lettuce with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tomato Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in 1 cup of cold water for 1 hour.

Make the tomato base

  1. In a saucepan, combine the strained tomatoes, chopped celery, bay leaves, and onion slice. Boil for a few minutes.

  2. Add the soaked gelatin to the saucepan and strain the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Stir in the salt and lemon juice.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into small round molds and refrigerate until hardened.

  2. Serve on lettuce leaves with mayonnaise dressing.

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. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the tomato liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Strained tomatoes
Provide the main liquid, body and tomato flavour of the jelly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the tomato flavour and balances its sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the soaked gelatin. Gelatin must be fully dissolved in the hot tomato mixture before straining and molding. Undissolved granules leave a grainy texture, and the jelly sets only once the gelatin is evenly distributed and the mixture cools.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (gelatin, tomato, celery, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, tomato, celery, 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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