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Tomato Jelly

A gelatin-based tomato preserve made with tomatoes, spices, and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Tomato Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the tomatoes with the carrots, onions, celery, parsley, cayenne pepper, cloves, salt, and Worcestershire sauce.

  2. Soak the gelatin in 1 cup of water, then add it to the boiling tomato mixture.

  3. Strain the mixture and pour it into cups or molds to congeal.

Serve

  1. Serve each portion on lettuce with mayonnaise.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

Gelatin
Sets the strained tomato liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Tomatoes
Form the main body of the jelly and provide its acidic, savory flavor.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory, tangy depth that rounds out the tomato flavor.

The step that matters

Soak the gelatin before adding it to the boiling mixture. Gelatin must be hydrated in water first so it dissolves evenly; added dry or lumpy, it can clump and leave gritty spots, and the jelly will not set uniformly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, parsley, gelatin, clove, carrot, pepper, celery):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, parsley, gelatin, clove, carrot, pepper, celery. 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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