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Dessert

Tomato Jelly

A gelatin set tomato preserve flavored with thyme, cloves, bay leaf, onion, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Tomato Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the tomatoes, thyme, cloves, salt, bay leaf, sugar, onion, and pepper until the tomatoes are soft.

  2. Add the soaked gelatin and stir until dissolved.

  3. Strain the mixture and pour it into a ring-shaped mold to set.

Fill and serve

  1. Once set, fill the center with celery cut into pieces or straws mixed with mayonnaise.

  2. Garnish the outside with shredded lettuce.

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. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and tomato flavour of the jelly once cooked and strained.
Gelatin
Sets the strained tomato liquid into a firm jelly that holds the ring shape.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and depth to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin fully before straining and setting. Gelatin only sets properly when fully dissolved in hot liquid. Undissolved granules leave weak spots, and the jelly may not firm evenly or hold its shape when unmoulded.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, thyme, clove, sugar, pepper, gelatin):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, thyme, clove, sugar, pepper, gelatin. 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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