Name: Stuffed Tomato Salad
Ingredients: good sized, smooth, solid tomatoes; onion, chopped; cucumber, chopped; parsley, chopped; cress, chopped; mayonnaise dressing; lettuce leaves or parsley for garnish

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stuffed Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Scald and skin the tomatoes quickly.
Slip them into ice water to chill.
Carefully remove the center without breaking the bottom.
Remove the seed pulp with your finger.
Fill the tomatoes with a mixture of onion, cucumber, parsley, and cress.
Cover with mayonnaise dressing.
Serve on a platter garnished with lettuce leaves or parsley.

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.

Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,405 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,564 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cucumber, parsley, lettuce):

Eggplantfits better
Beetrootfits better
Chivefits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cucumber, parsley, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.