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Tomato Jelly Salad
3 cups stewed tomatoes, fresh
1 teaspoon sugar or canned
Salt
1 slice onion
½ box gelatin
1 stalk celery
½ cup cold water
I bay-leaf
Lettuce
1 clove
Mayonnaise
¼ green pepper pod
Cook tomatoes with seasonings. Soak gelatin in cold water, add to boiling tomatoes, strain and pour into cups about the size of a tomato. Make a nest of small green lettuce leaves for each mold when serving, and place one tablespoon of mayonnaise on top of each tomato as it is turned from the mold.
Tomato jelly is often molded in a square pan and cut in dia. monds or cubes, when it makes a very acceptable accessory to other salads and an attractive garnish.
The ingredient list was set in two narrow columns and has run together in reprinting; read it as 3 cups stewed tomatoes, 1 slice onion, 1 stalk celery, 1 bay-leaf, 1 clove, ¼ green pepper, 1 teaspoon sugar, salt, ½ box gelatin, ½ cup cold water, lettuce and mayonnaise.
- Half a box of gelatinA box of granulated gelatin of this period typically held four envelopes of about a scant tablespoon each, so half a box works out at roughly 2 tablespoons, or about 14 g — two modern ¼-oz envelopes. That is a firm set for 3 cups of liquid, which is what you need if the jelly is to be turned out of a mold and hold its shape.
- Soften, then dissolve off the heatSprinkle the gelatin over the ½ cup cold water and let it stand five minutes until it swells, then stir it into the hot tomato. Prolonged boiling after the gelatin goes in weakens the set; bring the tomatoes and seasonings to a boil first, add the gelatin, and take the pan off the burner.
- Strain properlyThe onion, celery, bay-leaf, clove and pepper are flavoring only and all of it is strained out. Push the pulp through a fine sieve rather than a colander — a thin, clear jelly molds and unmolds far better than one carrying tomato solids that settle to the bottom.
- Molds "about the size of a tomato"That means individual molds of about ½ cup; 3 cups of liquid fills six. Custard cups, ramekins or dariole molds all work. Rinse them with cold water and leave them wet, which makes release easier.
- Chilling time, not givenAllow at least 4 hours in the refrigerator, or overnight. To unmold, dip the cup in hot water for a few seconds and run a thin knife around the edge; the surface should slacken without melting.
- Canned tomatoes nowUse canned whole or crushed tomatoes rather than passata, and taste before adding salt — modern cans are already salted, and some are sweetened. The teaspoon of sugar is there to round off acidity, not to make the jelly sweet.
- The square-pan variationFor cubes or diamonds to garnish other salads, pour the mixture about ¾ inch deep in a shallow pan, chill until firm, and cut with a wet knife. Cut shapes hold better if the gelatin is at the full 2 tablespoons.
- YieldSix individual molds, served as a first course or alongside cold meat.
Tomato jelly — what American cooks came to call tomato aspic — belongs to the early twentieth-century enthusiasm for molded salads, which followed the arrival of cheap, reliable granulated gelatin sold in boxes of pre-measured envelopes. Before that, a savory jelly meant clarifying calf's-foot or veal stock, an all-day job that put aspic more readily within reach of professional kitchens, though domestic cookbooks of the nineteenth century give such jellies routinely; once gelatin came in a paper packet, the same effect was within reach of a household kitchen in an afternoon. The Butterick book, published by a pattern company for readers running their own homes, treats the dish exactly as such books tend to: first as a composed individual salad on lettuce with a spoonful of mayonnaise, then as a utility item to be cut into cubes and used as garnish. The seasoning — onion, celery, bay, clove, green pepper — is the standard aromatic set for stewed tomatoes of the period, and the whole of it is strained away, leaving only a clear, sharp jelly that reads as a vegetable and a decoration at once.