Skip to main content
Salad

Tomato Salad

A chilled tomato salad served in tomato shells with celery, mayonnaise, and optional nasturtium garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Tomato Salad

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Drop the tomatoes into boiling water for 2-3 minutes.

  2. Remove the skin and cut off about ¼ of each tomato.

  3. Scoop out the center and fill each shell with chipped ice.

  4. Refrigerate for 2-3 hours.

Make the salad

  1. Dice the pulp and the upper part of the tomatoes.

  2. Mix with equal parts of finely cut celery and moisten with mayonnaise.

Serve

  1. Fill the tomato cups with the salad and serve on a lettuce leaf or garnish with nasturtium leaves.

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.

  1. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

Tomatoes
Form the edible cups and supply the juicy base of the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds moisture and richness, binding the diced vegetables together.
Celery
Adds crisp texture that contrasts with the soft tomato flesh.

The step that matters

Blanching the tomatoes. A brief dip in boiling water loosens the skin without cooking the flesh. Leaving the tomatoes in longer softens them, so the cups may collapse and the diced salad turns mushy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, 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.

More tomato salad recipes

Stuffed 27Frozen 12Cucumber 6with Mayonnaise 6Dressing 5Shrimp 4 See all 165 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipesBoiled Salad DressingBoiled Salad Dressing67 recipes