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Salad

Frozen Tomato Salad

A chilled tomato salad thickened with gelatin, mixed with walnuts, served frozen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Frozen Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold tomato juice for 30 minutes.

  2. Dissolve the gelatin in hot tomato juice and let it cool.

Make the tomato base

  1. Press the canned tomatoes through a sieve to extract all the pulp and juice.

  2. Season the tomato mixture with salt, pepper, onion juice, and lemon juice.

  3. Add the gelatin mixture to the seasoned tomatoes.

Freeze and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a freezer and freeze until slushy.

  2. Stir in the walnuts and pack the mixture into a mold for 1 hour.

  3. Serve on a bed of lettuce with French dressing, or sprinkle the walnuts on top if not added before molding.

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. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Tomato + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together498 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and liquid of the salad after being pressed through a sieve.
Gelatin
Sets the tomato mixture so it holds its shape when molded after partial freezing.
English walnuts
Add crunch and texture contrast to the soft, chilled tomato mixture.

The step that matters

Freeze until slushy. Freezing only until slushy, not solid, gives a light icy texture. Gelatin then helps the partly frozen mixture hold its shape in the mold. Freezing too long can make it hard and grainy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, lemon, walnut, 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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