Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Aspic

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tomato Aspic

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Combine tomatoes, bay leaf, cloves, cinnamon, salt, paprika, and onion juice in a pot.

  2. Boil slowly for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve and then through a cloth.

Set and mould

  1. Soak the gelatin in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Stir in the tarragon vinegar and the strained tomato mixture.

  3. Pour into wetted molds.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together61 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  3. Clove + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Tomato + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

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

  5. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

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

The step that matters

Soak the gelatin for the full 30 minutes. Gelatin must fully hydrate before it dissolves evenly, so it can set the aspic smoothly. Under-soaked gelatin can leave grainy or weak spots in the set jelly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, clove, cinnamon, gelatin, tarragon, vinegar. 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.

More tomato aspic recipes

Salad 10 See all 25 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes