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Tomato Jelly

A sweet and tangy tomato jelly made with tomatoes, spices, vinegar, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Tomato Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Combine tomatoes, cloves, bay leaf, onion, thyme, sugar, salt, black pepper, red pepper, and vinegar in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture and then strain it.

  3. Add the gelatin to the strained liquid and heat again until dissolved.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a mold and refrigerate for a day.

  2. Serve with meat.

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. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 and tangy flavor of the jelly.
Gelatin
Sets the strained liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the tomato flavor and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Balances the acidity and tartness of the tomatoes and vinegar.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatin. Gelatin must be fully dissolved in the hot strained liquid before pouring; any undissolved granules will not set evenly, leaving a grainy or weak jelly after chilling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, clove, thyme, sugar, pepper, vinegar, gelatin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, thyme, sugar, pepper, vinegar, 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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