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Dessert

Tomato Jelly

A gelatin-set tomato preserve made with tomatoes, thyme, cloves, salt, bay leaf, sugar, onion, pepper, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the tomato base

  1. Combine tomatoes, thyme, cloves, salt, bay leaf, sugar, onion, and pepper in a pot.

  2. Simmer the mixture for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture to remove solids.

Set the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatin in ½ cup of water until softened.

  2. Stir the softened gelatin into the hot tomato mixture until dissolved.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  4. Refrigerate until set.

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 flavor of the jelly.
Gelatin
Forms the network that sets the liquid into a firm jelly.

The step that matters

Stir the softened gelatin into the hot tomato mixture until dissolved. Gelatin must be fully dissolved to set evenly. Undissolved granules leave soft or gritty spots, and the mixture should be hot enough to melt the gelatin but not boiling hard, which can weaken its setting power.

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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