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Salad

Tomato Salad with Shrimps

A chilled salad of diced tomatoes, shrimp, pepper, salt, and mayonnaise served in tomato shells on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,655 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Salad with Shrimps

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Skin the tomatoes and chill them on ice.

  2. Remove the insides of the tomatoes and chop them into small pieces; drain off the juice.

Fill and chill

  1. Add the shrimps, pepper, salt, and mayonnaise dressing to the chopped tomato insides; stir lightly.

  2. Fill the tomato shells with the mixture and place them back on ice.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, place each tomato on a lettuce leaf and top with 1 teaspoon of mayonnaise.

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

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + shrimptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,689 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Shrimp + lettucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the hollow shell that holds the filling and add moisture and mild acidity.
Shrimps
Supply the main protein and a tender, mildly sweet texture in the filling.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess, binding the chopped tomato and shrimp into a moist filling.

The step that matters

Draining the tomato juice. Tomato juice left in the chopped filling thins the mayonnaise and makes the salad watery, so the filling loses its body and the shells can leak.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, shrimp, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, shrimp, pepper. 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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