Name: Ripe Tomato Salad
Ingredients: 1 peck tomatoes; 2 cups brown sugar; ½ cup coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); 1 cup chopped celery; 1 cup chopped onion; 1 cup horseradish; ½ cup celery seed; ½ cup mustard seed; vinegar (enough to cover)

Why it works: Horseradish and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,832 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ripe Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the tomatoes and place them in a jar.
Mix the brown sugar, coarse sea salt, chopped celery, chopped onion, horseradish, celery seed, and mustard seed together.
Pour the mixture over the tomatoes in the jar.
Cover the jar with a heavy cloth.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Horseradish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,832 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together4,169 recipes

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

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together835 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes: Form the bulk of the salad and release juice that mingles with the pickling liquid.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and horseradish.
Vinegar: Provides the acidity that preserves and sharpens the tomatoes as they pickle.
Horseradish: Adds pungent heat that mellows as the salad sits.
Mustard seed: Contributes a sharp, aromatic bite to the pickling mixture.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, sugar, celery, horseradish, mustard, vinegar):

Lettucebetter flavor fit
Cucumberbetter flavor fit
Broccolibetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sugar, celery, horseradish, mustard, vinegar. 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.