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Tomato Jelly Salad

A tomato jelly salad made with tomatoes, spices, gelatin, and served on lettuce with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Combine the tomatoes, bay leaf, cloves, mace, coarse sea salt, paprika, and onion juice in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer the mixture for 15 minutes.

  3. Press the simmered mixture through a fine sieve.

Set the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water until it softens.

  2. Stir the softened gelatin into the tomato mixture until it dissolves.

  3. Add the tarragon vinegar to the mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture into wetted molds.

  5. Once the mixture has set, serve the jelly on lettuce leaves and garnish with mayonnaise.

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. Clove + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

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

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body, flavour and acidity of the jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the tomato liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavour of the tomato jelly.

The step that matters

Stirring the gelatine into the hot tomato mixture until dissolved. Gelatine must be fully dissolved before the mixture is poured. Undissolved softened gelatine leaves weak spots and uneven setting, so the jelly may not hold its shape when turned out.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, clove, onion, tarragon, vinegar, lettuce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, onion, tarragon, vinegar, 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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