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Salad

Red Salad

A salad of tomatoes stuffed with celery, nuts, and mayonnaise, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Red Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scoop out the insides of the tomatoes and save the top slice as a cover.

Fill and serve

  1. Mix the celery and nut meats with mayonnaise.

  2. Fill each tomato with the mixture and replace the top slice.

  3. Serve each tomato on a white leaf of lettuce.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Tomato + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,438 recipes

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

  5. Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Hollowed out to hold the filling and serve as the edible cup.
Mayonnaise
Binds the celery and nut meats together and adds moisture and richness to the filling.
Celery
Adds crisp texture to the filling.
Nut meats
Add crunch and body to the filling.
Lettuce
Provides a crisp leaf to support each stuffed tomato.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, celery, meat. 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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