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Tomato-jelly

A sweet tomato preserve made by stewing tomatoes, straining, and setting with sugar, corn starch, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Tomato-jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Stew the tomatoes with salt and pepper until soft.

  2. Strain the pulp through a fine sieve or jelly-bag.

Make the jelly

  1. Add ½ cup sugar and 1 tablespoon corn-starch dissolved in ½ cup cold water to each pint of strained tomato.

  2. Heat the mixture. Stir until it boils for 1 minute.

Cool and serve

  1. Cool the jelly before serving with 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. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

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

Pepper and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, pulp and tart flavour of the jelly.
Corn-starch
Thickens the tomato liquid into a set, jelly-like texture when heated.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Stir until it boils for 1 minute. Cornstarch only thickens fully once the mixture reaches a boil and is held there briefly. Stopping early leaves a thin, runny jelly, while the cooled mixture sets to the final texture.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, corn. 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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