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Salad

Tomatoes with Vinaigrette

Sliced tomatoes tossed in a vinaigrette of olive oil, vinegar, oregano, salt, pepper, mustard, and garlic, served over lettuce with green onions and parsley.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,164 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Arrange tomatoes in a square glass baking dish.

  2. Shake oil, vinegar, oregano, salt, pepper, mustard, and garlic in a tightly covered jar.

Dress and chill

  1. Pour over tomatoes, then cover and refrigerate, spooning dressing over tomatoes occasionally.

  2. Chill for 2 hours, then arrange tomatoes on lettuce leaves and sprinkle with onions and parsley.

Serve

  1. Drizzle with dressing.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

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.

  1. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,164 recipes

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

  2. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Mustard + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,356 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + oreganotop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,767 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Tomato + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the juicy main body of the salad, absorbing flavor from the dressing as they chill.
Olive oil
Carries the fat-soluble flavors and gives the dressing a smooth, rich body.
Dried oregano leaves
Supplies the dominant herbal aroma that defines the dressing.
Garlic
Adds a sharp, pungent aroma that mellows during the chilling time.
Dry mustard
Helps the oil and vinegar hold together as an emulsion, giving a more cohesive dressing.

The step that matters

Shake the dressing thoroughly in a tightly covered jar. Oil and vinegar naturally separate. Vigorous shaking disperses the oil into tiny droplets, and dry mustard helps keep them suspended, so the dressing coats the tomatoes evenly rather than pooling on top.

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, olive, oregano, pepper, garlic, lettuce, onion):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Eggplantbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, olive, oregano, pepper, garlic, lettuce, onion. 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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