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Tomates En Mayonnaise

Cold tomatoes hollowed and filled with mayonnaise or mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomates En Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the tomatoes as for Tomato Salad and chill them whole on ice until very cold.

  2. Make Mayonnaise or Mustard Sauce by adding the yolk of 1 egg to the mustard sauce.

Assemble and serve

  1. When ready to serve, hollow out a small place from the top of each tomato.

  2. Fill the hollow in each tomato with the dressing.

  3. Arrange the tomatoes on a flat dish surrounded by pale green lettuce leaves.

  4. Serve very cold.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Tomato + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 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
Serve as the cold, firm base that holds the dressing in the hollowed cavity.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and mustard sauce so it becomes a thick, smooth dressing.
Lettuce
Provides a crisp, cool green base and contrast to the soft tomatoes and rich dressing.

The step that matters

Chill the tomatoes thoroughly. Very cold tomatoes stay firm and hold their shape when hollowed and filled, while warm tomatoes soften and let the dressing run. Keeping the dressing cold also helps the emulsion stay stable.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, mustard. 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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