Skip to main content
Main

Frozen Tomato Salad

A chilled tomato puree salad with onions, celery, Worcestershire sauce, paprika, salt, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Frozen Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the puree

  1. Chop the celery and onion.

  2. Combine the chopped celery, onion, and tomatoes in a pot and cook the mixture until soft.

  3. Mash the mixture through a sieve to obtain 1 cup of thick puree.

  4. Add salt and paprika to the puree and let the puree cool.

Freeze and serve

  1. Fold in 1 cup of whipped cream.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  3. Pack the mold in salt and ice for 3 hours.

  4. Turn out the salad and slice it.

  5. Serve the slices on lettuce leaves, optionally garnished with Neufchatel balls.

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. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 and flavor of the puree once cooked and sieved.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and air, giving the frozen salad a softer, creamier texture.
Celery
Adds a fresh, savory vegetable base to the cooked puree.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic flavor to the cooked puree.

The step that matters

Pack the mold in salt and ice for 3 hours. Salt lowers the freezing point of the ice, so the mold gets colder than ice alone and the salad freezes firm. Too little salt or time leaves it soft.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, sauce, celery, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sauce, celery, cream. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes