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Salad

Cucumber and Tomato Salad

A salad of lettuce topped with stuffed tomatoes filled with cucumber and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cucumber and Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Place a bed of crisp lettuce in a salad dish.

  2. Slice the cucumber and layer it over the lettuce.

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Slice the tomatoes, peel them by dipping in boiling water, and remove the centers.

  2. Turn the tomatoes upside down to drain.

  3. Sprinkle the tomatoes with coarse sea salt.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the tomatoes with cucumber cubes mixed with mayonnaise.

  2. Serve the stuffed tomatoes on the lettuce leaves.

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. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + tomatotop 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 juicy, hollow shells that hold the filling and add moisture and acidity.
Cucumber
Adds cool, crisp texture and fresh moisture to the filling.
Mayonnaise
Binds the cucumber cubes together and adds richness and fat to the filling.
Crisp lettuce
Forms a crisp bed that supports the stuffed tomatoes and adds freshness.

The step that matters

Turn the tomatoes upside down to drain. Tomatoes hold a lot of water. Draining them lets excess juice run out, so the filling stays firm and the salad does not turn watery.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cucumber. 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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