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Jellied Salad

A chilled salad of cabbage, celery, peppers, and sweetened vinegar gelled with gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Jellied Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 30 minutes.

Make the salad

  1. In a bowl, combine vinegar, lemon juice, boiling water, sugar, and salt.

  2. Add the soaked gelatine to the mixture and stir until dissolved.

  3. Strain the mixture and, when it begins to set, fold in the remaining ingredients.

  4. Pour into a mold and chill until firm.

  5. 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. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly once chilled.
Cabbage
Adds crisp texture that stays firm within the set gelatine.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, crisp bite to the jelly.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sugar and gives a tangy flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and balances the sharpness of the vinegar and lemon.

The step that matters

Fold in the remaining ingredients as the mixture begins to set. If the gelatine has set too firmly, the vegetables will not distribute evenly; if it is still too liquid, they will sink to the bottom. Waiting for a partial set suspends them evenly through the jelly.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, lemon, celery, 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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