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Tomato Juice Cocktail

A chilled tomato-based cocktail made with tomatoes, celery, green pepper, salt, onion, horseradish, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Juice Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Boil the tomatoes, celery, green pepper, and salt for about five minutes.

  2. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve to remove the seeds.

Season and chill

  1. Add the ketchup, grated onion, and horseradish to the tomato juice and pulp.

  2. Beat well and chill in a cold place.

Serve

  1. Beat again before serving and pour into small glasses.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Celery + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together835 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned tomatoes
Provide the main liquid and pulp that forms the body of the drink.
Celery
Adds a savory, vegetal aroma that flavors the cooked juice.
Green peppers
Contribute a fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavor when simmered into the juice.
Tomato ketchup
Adds concentrated tomato flavor, sweetness and acidity to deepen the juice.
Horseradish
Adds a sharp, pungent heat that lifts the flavor of the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the cooked tomatoes through a fine sieve removes seeds and tough fibers, giving the juice a smooth texture rather than a gritty or seedy one.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, pepper, onion, horseradish, ketchup):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, pepper, onion, horseradish, ketchup. 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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