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Tomato Aspic

A chilled tomato gelatin made with tomatoes, onion, bay leaf, celery seed, lemon juice, red pepper, salt, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tomato Aspic

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water.

Make the aspic

  1. In a pot, combine strained tomatoes, onion, bay leaf, celery seed, lemon juice, red pepper, and salt.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add the soaked gelatin and stir until dissolved.

  4. Strain the mixture into molds and refrigerate until hardened.

Serve

  1. Serve on lettuce leaves with mayonnaise dressing.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 jelly when chilled.
Cooked tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavor, and color of the aspic.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the tomato flavor.

The step that matters

Dissolve the soaked gelatin fully into the hot mixture. Gelatin only sets when fully dissolved, so stirring until no granules remain and not letting it boil after adding ensures an even, firm set when chilled.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, celery, lemon, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, celery, lemon, pepper. 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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