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A Summer Salad From the Libby Kitchens

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Summer Salad From the Libby Kitchens

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop young onions, green peppers, string beans, and cooked beets finely.

  2. Mix the chopped vegetables with Libby's Salad Dressing.

  3. Hollow out the tops of the tomatoes and fill them with the salad mixture.

  4. Put the filled tomatoes on ice to chill.

  5. When ready to serve, arrange the tomatoes on lettuce leaves and pour a spoonful of Libby's Salad Dressing over each tomato.

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. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  4. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

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