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Salad

Tomato Salad

A gelatin-based tomato salad with carrots, onions, celery, nuts, jelly, grapes, orange, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Tomato Salad

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomato base

  1. Strain the can of tomatoes, ensuring no seeds remain.

  2. Boil the carrot, onion, and celery in the tomato juice.

  3. Strain the mixture through several layers of cheesecloth.

  4. Dissolve the gelatine in boiling water, then add the strained tomato juice.

Set and serve

  1. When the mixture is nearly cold and starting to thicken, place a spoonful in a mold.

  2. Add nut meats, jelly, grapes, sliced orange, more nuts, and more jelly until the mold is filled.

  3. Set the molds on ice and serve on a bed of lettuce hearts, with one mold per person and a candied orange straw on each plate.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 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

Gelatine
Sets the tomato liquid into a firm, sliceable mold.
Tomatoes
Provide the main liquid and tomato flavour of the salad.
Nut meats
Add crunch and texture against the soft gelatine.

The step that matters

Place the spoonful in the mold while nearly cold and starting to thicken. If the mixture is too warm, the fruit and nuts will sink or float instead of staying suspended; if it has set too firmly, the layers will not bind together. Gelatine sets as it cools, so timing at this point controls how the mold holds its contents.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, carrot, onion, celery, meat, orange, lettuce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, carrot, onion, celery, meat, orange, lettuce. 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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