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Tomato Jelly

A gelatinous tomato sauce made with tomatoes, spices, and optional meat or celery, served chilled with mayonnaise and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Stew tomatoes with cinnamon, ground cloves, onion, bay leaves, salt, pepper, and vinegar until soft.

  2. Pass the stewed tomatoes through a sieve to remove seeds.

Set the jelly

  1. Dissolve gelatin in cold water.

  2. Pour the hot tomato mixture over the dissolved gelatin and mix well.

  3. Add chicken or veal pieces or chopped celery if desired.

  4. Pour the mixture into a mold and place on ice to set.

Serve

  1. Once cold, serve with mayonnaise dressing and lettuce.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and tangy flavour of the jelly.
Gelatin
Sets the tomato liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the tomato flavour.
Onion
Adds savoury depth to the stewed tomato base.

The step that matters

Pour the hot tomato mixture over the dissolved gelatin and mix well. Gelatin must be fully dissolved and evenly mixed into the warm liquid, or it will set unevenly and form weak or lumpy patches as the jelly chills.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cinnamon, clove, pepper, vinegar, gelatin, chicken):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cinnamon, clove, pepper, vinegar, gelatin, chicken. 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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