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Tomato Chicken Salad

A salad of tomatoes filled with chicken salad and topped with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel the tomatoes and chill them on ice.

  2. Cut out the inside of each tomato.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill each tomato with chicken salad.

  2. Place each filled tomato on a lettuce leaf.

  3. Top each with 1 tablespoon of mayonnaise dressing.

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 + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Chicken + lettucetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,421 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

Ripe tomatoes
Serve as the hollow cups that hold the filling, with juicy flesh that is removed.
Chicken salad
Provides the main filling, giving substance and richness to each tomato.
Lettuce leaves
Act as a crisp base that holds each filled tomato.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds creamy fat and moisture to the top of each tomato.

The step that matters

Cut out the inside of each tomato. Cutting too deep can puncture the tomato wall, causing it to leak and lose its shape under the filling. Keeping a sturdy shell lets it hold the chicken salad.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, chicken. 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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