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Dessert

Tomato Jelly Salad

A gelatin dessert made with tomatoes, celery, onion, and lemon, served chilled on a bed of celery or lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 Jelly Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine tomatoes, onion slice, chopped celery, salt, and pepper in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Soak gelatin in ½ cup cold water for 30 minutes.

  4. Add gelatin to the boiling mixture and strain.

  5. Stir in lemon juice.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into molds or small cups.

  2. Quickly dip the molds in boiling water.

  3. Turn out onto a bed of finely chopped celery or lettuce leaves.

  4. Top with a spoonful of 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. Pepper + lemontop 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 gel.
Tomatoes
Provide the main liquid, flavor, and acidity of the salad.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the tomato flavor.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess to the finished salad.

The step that matters

Quickly dip the molds in boiling water. A brief dip loosens the gel from the mold walls without melting it. Longer heating softens the set gelatin, so the salad may slump or lose its shape when turned out.

Swap the onion

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

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

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