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Tomato Jelly with Chicken

A chilled tomato jelly served with mayonnaise-coated chicken pieces and garnished with parsley, tarragon, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 425 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tomato Jelly with Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato jelly

  1. Boil ½ cup of tomatoes and add 2 oz. of soaked gelatine and ½ cup of strong meat broth.

  2. Stir over heat until the gelatine is completely dissolved, then set aside to cool.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of Madeira to the mixture.

  4. Prepare a 1-quart border mold (earthenware or china) and fill it with the cooled tomato puree.

  5. Set aside to harden.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Remove the skin from the cold chicken and cut it into pieces about 2x3 inches.

  2. Coat the chicken pieces thoroughly with mayonnaise sauce and sprinkle with parsley and tarragon.

Serve

  1. Turn the tomato jelly out onto a round dish and garnish it attractively.

  2. Pile the chicken pieces neatly in the center and serve very cold, with crisp lettuce leaves as garnish.

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. Tarragon + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,483 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together391 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Gelatine
Sets the tomato liquid into a firm jelly that holds its border shape.
Tomatoes
Provide the main flavour and colour of the jelly.
Strong meat broth
Adds savoury depth to the tomato jelly.
Mayonnaise sauce
Coats the chicken, adding fat and moisture and a creamy richness.
Tender chicken
Forms the main protein and bulk of the dish, served cold.

The step that matters

Let the jelly harden fully before turning it out. Gelatine sets as it cools, and a jelly that has not firmed completely will slump or tear when unmolded. Cooling the mixture before pouring also keeps the gelatine from setting unevenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, meat, chicken, sauce, tarragon, lettuce):

  1. Capersbetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Celerybetter flavor fit
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, meat, chicken, sauce, tarragon, 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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