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Tomato Jelly

A preserved tomato spread made with tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, mustard, cayenne, gelatin, and served on lettuce with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,356 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Stew the tomatoes until soft enough to strain through a sieve, ensuring no seeds get into the liquid.

  2. Boil the liquid, adding vinegar, salt, sugar, mixed mustard, cayenne pepper, and soaked gelatin.

  3. Let the mixture boil for a few minutes.

  4. Pour into after-dinner cups or small molds, adding a little chopped onion to each cup.

  5. Let stand in a cold place until it congeals.

Serve

  1. Serve on lettuce leaves with 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,655 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 flavour of the jelly once strained and cooked.
Gelatin
Sets the strained tomato liquid so it holds its shape when chilled.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the vinegar and tomato acidity.

The step that matters

Let the mixture boil for a few minutes. Gelatin must be fully dissolved in the hot liquid before setting, or the jelly may stay soft or set unevenly. Boiling also helps the seasonings blend evenly through the tomato base.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, gelatin, lettuce):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Cucumberbetter flavor fit
  3. Beetrootbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, gelatin, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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