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Tomato Salad

A chilled gelatin tomato salad with peas, celery, nuts, served on lettuce with dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Tomato Salad

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomato base

  1. Heat 1 quart of tomatoes and strain to obtain 1 pint of juice.

  2. Soak ½ box of gelatine in cold water until soft.

  3. Pour the hot strained juice over the softened gelatine.

  4. Add sugar, salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste.

Set in molds

  1. In small molds, place a few peas, small bits of celery, and chopped nuts.

  2. Pour the hot tomato mixture over the garnishes in the molds.

  3. Once cooled, turn out the salad onto lettuce leaves.

  4. Serve with salad 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  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

Tomatoes
Provide the main flavor and the juice that forms the salad base.
Gelatine
Sets the tomato juice into a firm, sliceable salad that holds its shape when turned out.

The step that matters

Pour the hot strained juice over the softened gelatine. Gelatine must be fully softened first and then dissolved in hot liquid; if it is added to juice that is too cool or not hot enough, it may not dissolve evenly and the salad may set with lumps or weak spots.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, pepper, peas, celery, 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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