Name: Tomato Salad
Ingredients: small firm tomatoes; lettuce; salad dressing

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

Ingredients

small firm tomatoes
lettuce
salad dressing

Directions

Prepare

Wash and scald the tomatoes, then remove the skins.
Chill the tomatoes and cut them into quarters or sixths.

Assemble and serve

Arrange the tomato sections on a bed of lettuce.
Press the sections apart at the top and add 1 teaspoon of salad dressing on each.
Serve immediately.

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 + 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

Small firm tomatoes: Provide the main body of the salad; firmness holds their shape when cut into sections.
Lettuce: Forms a crisp bed that supports the tomato sections and adds a fresh base.
Salad dressing: Adds moisture and tang that flavours the tomato sections.

“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.