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Salad

Tomato Aspic Salad

Chilled tomato aspic served on lettuce with mayonnaise dressing and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Aspic Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the aspic

  1. Strain the tomatoes and add salt, pepper, and onion juice.

  2. Add the gelatine and soak for 30 minutes.

  3. Heat the mixture to boiling point and pour into small moulds.

  4. Refrigerate until hardened.

Serve

  1. Arrange a nest of lettuce leaves on a salad dish.

  2. Turn out each mould of jelly into the nest.

  3. Pour mayonnaise dressing around the jelly and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 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 flavour and liquid base of the aspic.
Gelatine
Sets the tomato liquid into a firm jelly that holds its shape when turned out.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds richness and fat that contrasts with the sharp, savoury jelly.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture to boiling point and pour into small moulds.. Gelatine must be fully dissolved before setting; if it is not, the aspic can be grainy or set unevenly. Pouring while the mixture is hot but not left to cool too long keeps it smooth and evenly set.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, lettuce, parsley. 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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