Name: Tomato and Mushroom Salad
Ingredients: 6 large mushrooms; 6 medium tomatoes; 1 tablespoon butter; ½ teaspoon celery salt; 2 drops onion juice; dash of paprika; mayonnaise; whipped cream; lettuce leaves

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Tomato and Mushroom Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Peel the tomatoes and chill them on ice.
Peel and break the mushrooms into good-sized pieces.

Make the filling

Sauté the mushrooms in butter for 3 minutes, adding onion juice, celery salt, and paprika.
Chill the sautéed mushrooms thoroughly.
Scoop out the insides of the tomatoes and mix them with the mushrooms.
Combine the mixture with mayonnaise and fill the tomato shells.

Top and serve

Top each filled tomato with a spoonful of mayonnaise mixed with whipped cream.
Serve on a lettuce leaf.

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.

Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,719 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms: Provide the main savory bulk and texture of the filling once sautéed.
Tomatoes: Serve as the edible shells and add moisture and fresh acidity to the salad.
Butter: Carries the flavour of the sautéed mushrooms and helps them brown lightly.
Mayonnaise: Binds the filling together and adds richness and fat to the salad.
Whipped cream: Adds a light, airy richness to the mayonnaise topping.

The step that matters

Chill the sautéed mushrooms thoroughly. If the mushrooms are still warm when mixed with mayonnaise, the fat can separate and the filling becomes greasy and loose. Full chilling keeps the mayonnaise stable and the filling firm enough to hold its shape in the tomato shells.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, tomato, butter, celery, onion, cream):

Potatofits better
Carrotfits better
Spinachfits better
Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, tomato, butter, celery, onion, cream. 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.