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Salad

Tomato and Cucumber Baskets

A salad of cucumber and tomato baskets marinated in French dressing, served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Tomato and Cucumber Baskets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the baskets

  1. Cut thick slices from both ends of the cucumbers and remove two pieces from each to create baskets with handles; scoop out the pulp.

  2. Carefully cut pieces from the tomatoes to create baskets with handles; scoop out the pulp.

Marinate and fill

  1. Marinate the cucumber pieces and tomato pieces separately with French Dressing.

  2. Fill the cucumber baskets with tomato and the tomato baskets with cucumber.

Serve

  1. Arrange the baskets on lettuce leaves, alternating green and red.

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.

  1. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

What each ingredient does

Cucumbers
Form the crisp, green baskets and the pieces that fill the tomato baskets.
Tomatoes
Form the red baskets and the pieces that fill the cucumber baskets, adding juicy colour and moisture.
French dressing
Seasons the cucumber and tomato pieces with acidity and fat during marinating.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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