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Tomato Jelly
1 can tomatoes or 1 1/4 cups condensed tomato 3 bay leaves 1 medium-sized onion 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup lemon juice 1/3 box vegetable gelatine 1 cup boiling water 2 tablespoons sugar Cook the tomatoes with the seasoning until reduced one-third; then rub through a colander. Prepare the vegetable gelatine according to general directions, using one cup of boiling water in which to cook it. When cooked and strained, add to the tomatoes, turn into molds, and set in a cool place. It may be cut into cubes or other fancy shapes if desired, and served as a garnish. May also be served as a salad with cream dressing.
If condensed tomato is used, it is only necessary to heat with the seasonings long enough to extract the flavor.
A vegetarian aspic built on agar rather than animal gelatine, from an era when "vegetable gelatine" came in boxes of pressed shreds. The measurements assume products that no longer exist in that form, so the setting agent is the part that needs translating.
- Vegetable gelatine is agar-agarSold then as a boxed mass of dried seaweed shreds or sticks, now sold as flakes or powder. As a working guide, roughly 1 teaspoon of agar powder or 1 tablespoon of flakes sets 1 cup of liquid to a firm, sliceable jelly.
- "1/3 box" is not a usable measureBox sizes varied by brand and the shreds were compressible, so this cannot be converted honestly. Measure agar against your total liquid instead, and err slightly firm if you intend to cut cubes for garnish.
- Agar must actually boilThis is the hinge. Unlike animal gelatine, agar dissolves only at a full boil and needs a couple of minutes at it; merely hot water leaves gritty threads that never set. Strain after cooking, as the recipe says, then combine while both mixtures are still hot or the agar will seize in strings.
- It sets at room temperatureAgar gels around 100F and does not melt again until roughly 185F, so "set in a cool place" is literal — no refrigeration required, and the finished jelly holds up on a warm buffet in a way a gelatine aspic will not. The texture is short and clean-breaking rather than wobbly.
- The can of tomatoesCan sizes in this period varied; the common No. 2 held roughly 1 lb 4 oz, or about 2 1/2 cups with juice, and the recipe treats a can as equivalent to 1 1/4 cups of "condensed tomato." "Condensed tomato" here means a concentrated tomato product rather than anything sweetened, most likely a purée, though condensed tomato soup was also sold under that name; canned purée or passata is the nearest modern stand-in.
- Lemon juice and sugarHalf a cup of lemon juice is assertive by modern taste and was partly there to brighten flat, long-cooked canned tomato. Taste before molding and hold some back if your tomatoes are already acidic. High acid can weaken an agar set slightly, so add it after the agar is dissolved.
- Yield and servingExpect roughly 3 cups of jelly, enough for six small molds or a shallow pan to be cut into cubes. "Cream dressing" of the period usually meant a cooked or boiled salad dressing enriched with cream, though the name was also used for plain cream sharpened with lemon or vinegar; in neither case is it modern mayonnaise.
Vegetarian and reform cookbooks of the early twentieth century had a standing problem with jellies: ordinary gelatine is rendered from bones and hides, which ruled it out for readers who had given up meat on principle. Agar-agar, extracted from red seaweeds and long used in East and Southeast Asian kitchens, arrived in Western pantries partly through the laboratory — it had become the standard medium for culturing bacteria by the late 1880s — and was marketed to households as "vegetable gelatine" or "Japanese isinglass." A tomato aspic cut into cubes and used as a garnish, or bedded on lettuce with a cooked cream dressing, was exactly the sort of dish that let a meatless table look like a conventional one; the salad course was where vegetarian cookery of the period could compete on its own terms rather than apologize.