Home › Salads and Salad Dressings › Molded Tomato Salad
Molded Tomato Salad
To one can of tomato soup add two cups of boiling water, a third of a cup of vinegar, two tablespoonfuls of sugar and the juice of half an onion. Soften two tablespoonfuls of granulated gelatin in half a cup of cold water, add this to the tomato mixture, and when the gelatin is dissolved, strain into individual molds, that have been rinsed in cold water. Set in the ice box to stiffen. Cover a platter with shredded lettuce leaves, unmold the tomato jelly, and serve on the lettuce leaves.
Garnish with pitted ripe olives.
A tomato aspic built on canned condensed soup rather than stock — quick, and it sets reliably if the gelatin is fully dissolved before chilling. A few of the measurements need translating.
- The can of soupCondensed tomato soup, the standard 10.5–10.75 oz can. Do not use ready-to-serve soup, which is already diluted and will give a thin, pale jelly.
- Granulated gelatinTwo tablespoons is about two 1/4-oz envelopes of unflavored powdered gelatin, roughly 1/2 oz total. Against the roughly 4 cups of total liquid here that gives a jelly firm enough to unmold cleanly without turning rubbery.
- The hinge: dissolve, don't boilBloom the gelatin in the cold water for 5 minutes, then stir it into the hot tomato mixture off the heat and keep stirring until no grains remain on a spoon back. Gelatin held at a boil loses setting power, and undissolved granules leave gritty streaks.
- Juice of half an onionGrate the cut half on a box grater and squeeze the pulp in your hand or through a sieve; you want about a tablespoon of juice. Chopped onion left in the mix would be strained out anyway.
- VinegarA third of a cup is assertive. Cider vinegar suits the sweet-sour balance here; plain distilled white works but tastes flatter.
- "Set in the ice box"The refrigerator, 4 hours minimum for individual molds and better overnight. An ice box ran warmer than a modern fridge, so the original timing was vaguer by necessity.
- UnmoldingRinsing the molds in cold water is the period trick and it does help. A brief dip of the filled mold in warm water and a thin knife run around the rim will release a stubborn one.
- YieldAbout 4 cups of liquid, enough for eight half-cup molds. Serve as a first course or alongside cold chicken, with mayonnaise if you want it richer.
Molded salads like this one belong to the long American vogue for gelatin cookery that followed the arrival of reliable powdered gelatin in the late nineteenth century — Charles Knox's granulated product made setting a jelly a matter of measuring rather than of boiling calves' feet, and tomato aspic became one of the fixtures of the luncheon table. Building it on canned condensed soup instead of fresh tomatoes or stock is the shortcut that marks this as a twentieth-century recipe rather than a Victorian one, and it fits a book called Cook and Be Cool: the appeal of a chilled molded salad was that it kept the cook away from the range in hot weather and could be made the day before. The pitted ripe olives do the same work as the shredded lettuce — color and contrast against a flat red surface that otherwise looks like exactly what it is.