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Tomato Jelly Salad

A chilled tomato gelatin dish with celery, walnuts, and dressing, served in a ring mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Tomato Jelly Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 5 minutes.

  2. Cook the tomatoes, onion, celery, cloves, salt, sugar, and paprika for 10 minutes.

  3. Add the soaked gelatine and stir until dissolved.

  4. Strain the mixture and pour it into a ring mold.

  5. Once cold, remove the jelly from the mold onto a round platter.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix chopped celery and walnuts with French or Mayonnaise Dressing.

  2. Fill the center of the jelly ring with the mixture and garnish with lettuce leaves and celery.

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. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  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. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 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 jelly that holds its ring shape.
Tomatoes
Provide the main flavour and body of the jelly.
English walnuts
Add crunch against the soft jelly and the dressed celery filling.
French or mayonnaise dressing
Adds richness and moisture to the celery and walnut filling.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture before moulding. Straining removes cooked solids so the jelly sets clear and smooth. Gelatine must be fully dissolved first, or it can set unevenly and leave a grainy texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, celery, clove, sugar, walnut, lettuce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, celery, clove, sugar, walnut, 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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