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Salad

Jellied Tomato Salad

A salad of tomatoes set in gelatin with celery, peas, olives, and egg yolk and white garnish, served with mayonnaise on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Jellied Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the tomatoes through a fine strainer, discarding the seeds.

  3. Heat the tomato liquid and add the soaked gelatin, seasoning with salt, pepper, and sugar.

Layer and set

  1. Pour a layer of the mixture into a mold and let it partially congeal.

  2. Add a layer of chopped celery, followed by another layer of the jelly.

  3. Next, add a layer of peas, then more jelly, followed by a layer of stuffed olives, and finish with the remaining jelly.

  4. Set the mold on ice to harden.

Serve

  1. Serve with mayonnaise dressing on lettuce leaves, garnished with chopped yolks and whites of eggs.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

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

  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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 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 tomato liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly.
Tomatoes
Provide the main liquid, flavor, and acidity of the jelly.
Celery
Adds crisp texture within the set jelly layers.
Peas
Add sweetness and soft texture as a suspended layer.
Stuffed olives
Add salty, briny flavor and contrast to the mild jelly.

The step that matters

Let each layer partially congeal before adding the next. If the jelly is too liquid, the added celery, peas, and olives sink or mix into the layers below instead of staying suspended. Gelatin sets as it cools, so each layer needs to thicken enough to hold the next one in place.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, tomato, pepper, sugar, celery, olive, 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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