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Tomatoes Stuffed with Cucumbers

Tomatoes are hollowed and filled with a cucumber and tomato pulp mixture, seasoned with salt and pepper, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Tomatoes Stuffed with Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomato cups

  1. Peel the tomatoes, cut off the stem ends, and scoop out the pulp to form cups.

  2. Turn the cups upside down and place them in a cool place.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the solid pulp from the tomatoes and the cucumber finely.

  2. Stir the chopped mixture into the cream dressing.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the tomato cups with the mixture, adding salt and pepper to taste.

  2. Serve immediately on lettuce leaves.

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. Tomato + cucumbertop 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).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 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

Tomatoes
Form the hollow cups that hold the filling and add juicy, acidic flavour.
Cucumber
Adds crisp texture and fresh, mild flavour to the chopped filling.
Cream dressing
Binds the chopped vegetables together and adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Pimentoes
Add sweet, mild pepper flavour and colour to the dish.

The step that matters

Chop the pulp and cucumber finely. Fine, even pieces blend evenly into the cream dressing and fill the tomato cups neatly. Large chunks can make the filling watery and uneven, and wet pulp can thin the dressing.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, pepper, cream, 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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