Skip to main content
Salad

Spanish Salad

A chilled salad of French beans tossed with mayonnaise or salad cream and topped with sliced ripe tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spanish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place cold dressed French beans in the center of a dish.

  2. Just before serving, stir the beans lightly with a little mayonnaise sauce or salad cream.

  3. Garnish the beans with three or four ripe tomatoes, sliced and arranged in a circle, overlapping each slice.

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. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Beans + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

French beans
Form the bulk of the salad, providing the main texture and body.
Mayonnaise sauce or salad cream
Adds creamy richness and moisture, coating the beans with a fatty dressing.
Ripe tomatoes
Contribute juiciness, acidity and fresh flavor as the garnish.

The step that matters

Stir in the mayonnaise just before serving. Adding the dressing late keeps the beans from going soggy or watery and keeps the creamy coating fresh and cohesive.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes