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Tomato Jelly

A preserved tomato jelly made with tomatoes, herbs, sugar, gelatin, and spices.

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 tomato base

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

  2. Cook over medium heat until the mixture is well blended.

  3. Strain the mixture to remove solids.

Set the jelly

  1. Add the soaked gelatin to the strained liquid and stir until dissolved.

  2. Pour into molds and 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
Sets the strained liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly when chilled.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes and adds sweetness.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin fully into the warm strained liquid. Gelatin only sets when it is completely dissolved and evenly distributed. Undissolved granules or lumps leave weak, grainy spots in the finished jelly, so stir until no particles remain before pouring into molds.

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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