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Salad

Tomatoes with Orange Juice

Tomatoes served chilled with powdered sugar and orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 689 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tomatoes with Orange Juice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald the tomatoes to remove the skin, then peel them and let them cool.

  2. Slice the tomatoes into half‑inch thick slices.

Assemble and serve

  1. Dust the slices with powdered sugar and arrange them on a serving dish.

  2. Squeeze the juice of the orange over the tomatoes and serve cold.

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. Tomato + orangetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together689 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Tomato + sugartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and juicy texture of the salad.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the tomatoes' natural acidity.
Orange juice
Adds bright acidity and citrus aroma that complement the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Scalding the tomatoes. Brief immersion in hot water loosens the skin so it peels off cleanly. Leaving them too long starts to cook the flesh, making slices soft and mushy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, orange):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange. 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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