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Tomato Jelly Salad

A chilled gelatin salad made with tomatoes, celery, onion, and spices, served with mayonnaise or boiled dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,047 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tomato Jelly Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Soften the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Cook the next seven ingredients for 20 minutes to make 2 cups of stock.

Set and serve

  1. Add salt and lemon juice, then press through a strainer.

  2. Pour the strained mixture over the softened gelatine and stir until dissolved.

  3. Strain through a coarse strainer into moistened custard cups and chill.

  4. Unmould on lettuce leaves and stick a clove in each mould.

  5. Serve with mayonnaise or boiled dressing.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,012 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the strained tomato liquid into a firm, sliceable gel when chilled.
Tomatoes
Provide the main flavour and liquid base of the stock and gel.

The step that matters

Stir the gelatine until fully dissolved. Gelatine only sets properly when it is completely dissolved into warm liquid. Undissolved granules leave weak spots and grainy texture in the chilled gel.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, clove, tomato, pepper, sugar, lemon):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Okrabetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, clove, tomato, pepper, sugar, lemon. 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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