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Tomato Aspic

A gelatinized tomato dish made with tomatoes, onion, bay leaves, salt, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tomato Aspic

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for half an hour.

  2. Strain the tomatoes and place them in a saucepan with the onion, bay leaves, salt, and cayenne pepper.

Make the aspic

  1. Bring the mixture to a boil and add the soaked gelatine, stirring until dissolved.

  2. Add the lemon juice and strain the mixture again.

  3. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve individually 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the tomato liquid into a firm, wobbly aspic once chilled.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and colour of the aspic.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the tomato flavour.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine. Gelatine must be fully dissolved into the hot tomato mixture, not left in lumps. Boiling the mixture is fine, but undissolved gelatine will leave gritty spots and weaken the set once chilled.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, 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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