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Salad

Tomato and Cucumber Salad

A fresh salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato and Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skins from the tomatoes and cut them into quarters.

  2. Slice the cucumbers thinly.

  3. Line a salad dish with the blanched lettuce leaves.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the quartered tomatoes on the lettuce and put the cucumbers between them.

  2. Pour the French dressing over the salad.

  3. Let it stand on ice for one hour before serving.

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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  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
Provide the main body, juice and acidity of the salad.
Cucumbers
Add crisp texture and a cool, watery freshness.
French dressing
Adds moisture, acidity and seasoning that coat the vegetables.

The step that matters

Letting the salad stand on ice for one hour. Chilling firms the cucumber and tomato and keeps the salad crisp, while the dressing gradually seasons the vegetables. Serving it too soon leaves the flavours separate and the texture limp.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, 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.

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