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Salad

Tomato and Celery Salad

A gelatin-based salad of tomatoes and shredded celery topped with mayonnaise and served with salted crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato and Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato jelly

  1. Stew the canned tomatoes for a few minutes with salt.

  2. Rub the tomatoes through a sieve to extract the juice.

  3. Thicken the juice with gelatin and mold it; set on ice until cold.

Assemble and serve

  1. Turn the molded juice into a salad bowl and heap shredded celery around it.

  2. Pour the mayonnaise over the salad and serve with salted crackers.

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 + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  2. Gelatin + celerytop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together172 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  3. Tomato + gelatintop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the juice that forms the base of the molded salad.
Gelatin
Sets the strained tomato juice into a firm, sliceable mold.
Celery
Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft molded tomato.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and fat that coats the salad and softens its acidity.

The step that matters

Thicken the juice with gelatin and mold it; set on ice until cold.. Gelatin only sets when the juice is cold enough and has been fully dissolved and evenly mixed in. Setting it on ice gives a firm mold that holds its shape when turned out.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against gelatin, celery. 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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