Why it works: Tomato and bread match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,013 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Prepare the dressing
Put the parsley into the processor bowl and process until finely chopped.
Add the salad oil, lemon juice, sugar, salt, washed and trimmed radishes, quartered tomatoes, and trimmed spring onions.
Process until thoroughly blended and the vegetables are chopped into fairly small flakes.
Transfer the mixture into another bowl.
Make the bread salad
Without washing the processor bowl or blade, put in the slices of bread broken into rough chunks.
Process until you have fine breadcrumbs (you may have to scrape the bowl down a couple of times).
Add 125 ml water and process again for 3 seconds to mix thoroughly.
Take out the breadcrumbs and mix them with the vegetable dressing.
Taste for seasoning.
If more liquid is needed, add up to another 225 ml water to moisten the breadcrumbs.
Serve
Line a dish with the inner leaves of the cos lettuce.
Fill the centre with the bread salad.
This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.
Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.
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.
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Tomato + breadtop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together1,013 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together14,036 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Radish + lettucetop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together58 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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Tomato + lettucetop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together1,654 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Tomato + oniontop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together20,622 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
- White bread
- Absorbs the dressing and becomes fine crumbs that give the salad its body.
- Parsley
- Adds fresh, green flavour and most of the salad's bulk.
- Lemon juice
- Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sugar.
- Salad oil
- Adds fat that carries flavour and keeps the crumbs from tasting dry.
- Tomatoes
- Contribute moisture and juiciness to the mixture.
- Spring onions
- Add a sharp, aromatic onion flavour.
The step that matters
Moistening the breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs soak up liquid unevenly, so adding water gradually and tasting lets you reach a moist, not soggy, texture. Adding too much at once can make the salad waterlogged.
Flavor stand-ins for the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, lemon, sugar, radish, tomato, bread, lettuce):
- Cucumberbetter flavor fit
- Capsicumbetter flavor fit
- Carrotbetter flavor fit
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, lemon, sugar, radish, tomato, bread, lettuce. 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).
“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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