Name: Tomato Salad
Ingredients: 4 ripe tomatoes; 1 head of lettuce; ½ cup mayonnaise or French 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

4 ripe tomatoes
1 head of lettuce
½ cup mayonnaise or French dressing

Directions

Peel the tomatoes and slice them.
Arrange the sliced tomatoes on a bed of lettuce leaves.
Drizzle with mayonnaise or French dressing.
Ensure the salad is served ice cold.

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

Tomatoes: Provide the main body, juiciness and a fresh, lightly acidic flavour.
Lettuce: Forms a crisp, cool base that holds the sliced tomatoes.
Mayonnaise or french dressing: Adds fat, moisture and savoury flavour that coats 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.