Name: Tomato Salad
Ingredients: 4 tomatoes, thinly sliced; 1 Spanish onion, cooked and thinly sliced; Plain dressing

Why it works: Tomato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Salad

Ingredients

4 tomatoes, thinly sliced
1 Spanish onion, cooked and thinly sliced
Plain dressing

Directions

Slice the tomatoes and cooked Spanish onion thinly.
Combine the tomatoes and onion in a bowl in a 4:1 ratio.
Mix with plain dressing to taste.

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.

Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 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, moisture and fresh acidity of the salad.
Spanish onion: Adds a mild, sweet savoury note once cooked, balancing the tomatoes.

“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.