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Stuffed Tomato Salad

A salad of hollowed tomatoes filled with apple and celery mixture, topped with boiled dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Stuffed Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel the tomatoes and remove a thin slice from the stem end of each.

  2. Take out the seeds and some of the pulp, then sprinkle the insides with coarse sea salt.

  3. Invert the tomatoes and let them stand for 30 minutes.

Fill and serve

  1. Mix equal quantities of apple and celery pieces with Boiled Dressing.

  2. Fill the tomatoes with the apple and celery mixture.

  3. Arrange the stuffed tomatoes on lettuce leaves and garnish the top of each with more Boiled Dressing.

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. Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Tomato + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 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

Medium-sized tomatoes
Hollowed shells that hold the filling and give the salad its main body.
Apple
Adds crisp texture and mild sweetness to the filling.
Celery
Adds crunch and a fresh, slightly savory bite to the filling.
Boiled dressing
Binds the filling and adds moisture and tang to the apple and celery.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the tomatoes. Salting the hollowed insides and inverting the tomatoes for 30 minutes draws out excess moisture. Skipping or shortening this leaves the shells watery, which thins the dressing and dilutes the filling.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

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