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Tomato Aspic

A jellied tomato mixture with carrots, onion, red pepper, and stuffed olives, served with watercress or lettuce and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tomato Aspic

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Boil the carrots in a granite pan with the tomato juice, sliced onion, and red pepper until the carrots are tender, then strain.

  2. Dissolve the gelatin in hot water and mix it with the strained tomato juice. Allow it to stand until it begins to set.

Mold and set

  1. Pour a spoonful of the mixture into a cup mold and place in blanched nut meat. Add more juice, the halved stuffed olive, more juice, and several nuts.

  2. Fill the cup to the top with juice and set it on ice to harden.

Serve

  1. Arrange watercress or lettuce leaves on plates. Turn the jelly out of the mold and serve with mayonnaise.

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 + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

Gelatin
Sets the tomato juice into a firm, sliceable jelly that holds its shape when unmolded.
Tomato juice
Forms the liquid base of the aspic and gives it its flavor and color.
Carrots
Add body and a mild sweetness to the juice as they cook down.
Blanched nut meat
Adds a crisp, mild contrast in texture inside the set jelly.

The step that matters

Let the gelatin stand until it begins to set. Gelatin must be partly set before the nuts, olive and juice are added, so the pieces stay suspended instead of sinking or floating. Fully setting it too early would stop the layers from knitting together.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, tomato, pepper, gelatin, meat, olive, watercress):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, tomato, pepper, gelatin, meat, olive, watercress. 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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