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Tomato Aspic

A chilled tomato gelatin made with tomato liquor, gelatine, onion, bay leaf, cloves, parsley, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Aspic

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 30 minutes.

Make the aspic

  1. Stew the bay leaf, onion, parsley, and cloves in the tomato liquor for 15 minutes.

  2. Stir in the soaked gelatine and season with salt and cayenne.

  3. Strain the mixture through a flannel without squeezing.

Serve

  1. Serve the aspic as a salad on lettuce or to garnish cold meats.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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

Tomato liquor
Forms the flavourful liquid base that the aspic sets from.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture through a flannel without squeezing. Squeezing forces fine particles and cloudy solids through the cloth, making the aspic murky. Letting it drip keeps the set jelly clear and smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, parsley, pepper. 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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