Name: Cream Tomato Salad
Ingredients: large ripe tomatoes; coarse sea salt; paprika; garlic; whipped cream

Why it works: Tomato and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,076 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cream Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Pour boiling water over the tomatoes to loosen the skins.
Quickly remove the skins and set the tomatoes on ice for several hours.
Just before serving, cut each tomato in half.
Sprinkle lightly with coarse sea salt and paprika.
Rub a cold plate with garlic and place the tomatoes on it.
Top each tomato half with a generous spoonful of whipped cream.

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.

Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,076 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Garlic + creamtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,081 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Tomato + creamtop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,034 recipes

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