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Salad

Tomato Aspic Salad

A chilled tomato aspic made with gelatin, tomatoes, spices, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Tomato Aspic Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve gelatine in cold water.

  2. Combine tomatoes, cloves, allspice, sugar, black pepper, and salt in a saucepan.

Make the aspic

  1. Cook for about 20 minutes, then strain the mixture.

  2. Return the strained mixture to the heat and bring to a boil.

  3. Mix the hot mixture with the soaked gelatine.

  4. Pour into molds and refrigerate until set.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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 jelly as it cools.
Tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and acidity of the aspic.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the tomatoes and rounds out their flavour.

The step that matters

Mixing the hot tomato mixture with the soaked gelatine. Gelatine must be fully dissolved and evenly distributed; if the mixture is too cool, the gelatine can clump or set unevenly, leaving a grainy or weak aspic.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, sugar, pepper. 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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