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Salad

Tomato Jelly Salad

A gelatin-based salad made with tomato juice, gelatin, onion juice, Worcestershire sauce, red pepper, salt, olives, hard boiled eggs, mayonnaise, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tomato Jelly Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatin in water for 30 minutes.

Make the jelly

  1. Combine tomato juice, soaked gelatin, onion juice, Worcestershire sauce, red pepper, and salt in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture.

  3. Strain the boiled mixture into a mold.

  4. Once set, turn the jelly out onto a platter.

Garnish and serve

  1. Top the jelly with chopped olives.

  2. Top the jelly with sliced hard boiled eggs.

  3. Serve the jelly with mayonnaise.

  4. Garnish the served jelly with lettuce leaves.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

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

  2. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 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. Gelatin + saucetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Gelatin
Sets the tomato juice into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Tomato juice
Forms the liquid base and provides the savoury tomato flavour of the jelly.
Hard boiled eggs
Add protein-rich texture and a mild, creamy contrast to the tart jelly.
Mayonnaise made with olive oil
Adds richness and fat that balances the acidity of the tomato jelly.

The step that matters

Strain the boiled mixture into a mold. Gelatin must be fully dissolved before the mixture is poured and chilled. Straining removes any undissolved gelatin and bits, so the jelly sets smooth and clear rather than grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, gelatin, sauce, pepper, olive, egg, lettuce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, gelatin, sauce, pepper, olive, egg, 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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