Name: Tomato Salad
Ingredients: 6 tomatoes; 2 hard-boiled eggs; 2 tablespoons minced celery; 2 tablespoons olive oil; 1 teaspoon mustard; 1 teaspoon vinegar; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; lettuce for serving

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

Peel and scoop out the insides of 6 tomatoes, strain the juice from the pulp, and slice the pulp.

Make the filling

Add 2 whole tomatoes, cut and strained in the same way, along with 2 hard-boiled eggs, minced celery, olive oil, mustard, vinegar, pepper, and salt.
Mix all ingredients together and fill the hollowed tomatoes with the mixture.

Serve

Serve the filled tomatoes on a nest of lettuce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,356 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,539 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes: Form the edible shells and, with their pulp, supply the moisture and fresh acidity of the salad.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add body and richness to the filling through their set, creamy yolks and whites.
Olive oil: Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the filling a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Mustard: Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the richness of the eggs and oil.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the filling and sharpens the tomato flavour.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, celery, olive, mustard, vinegar, pepper, lettuce):

Cucumberfits better
Spinachfits better
Broccolifits better
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, celery, olive, mustard, vinegar, pepper, 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.