Name: Tomato Salad
Ingredients: tomatoes; lettuce leaves; mayonnaise; minced onion; celery; cucumber

Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,409 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Peel and chill the tomatoes.
Cut the tomatoes in half crosswise.
Arrange each half on a lettuce leaf.
Garnish with mayonnaise and minced onion.
Alternatively, serve the tomatoes whole or stuffed with minced onion, celery, and cucumber.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,409 recipes

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

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together2,405 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,655 recipes

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

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

Mustardbetter flavor fit
Beetrootbetter flavor fit
Spinachbetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, lettuce, celery, cucumber. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).