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Dessert

Tomato Jelly

A gelatin-based tomato preserve made by cooking tomatoes with onion, bay leaf, clove, and salt, then setting with gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cook the tomatoes with the onion, bay leaf, clove, and salt for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the cooked tomatoes.

  3. Soak the gelatin in the cold water.

Set and serve

  1. Add 8 tablespoons of the strained liquid to the gelatin and stir until dissolved.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  3. Once set, turn out onto a lettuce leaf and serve with any salad 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. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Gelatin + clovetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  5. Gelatin + tomatotop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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 jelly.
Tomatoes
Provide the main flavour and most of the liquid that becomes the jelly.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatin in the strained liquid. Gelatin must be fully dissolved, not left in lumps, so it sets evenly. Stirring the hot liquid into the soaked gelatin until clear ensures a uniform gel throughout the mold.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, tomato, onion. 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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