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Salad

Salad of Tomatoes Stuffed with Celery

A salad of small tomatoes stuffed with a celery and tartare sauce mixture, served chilled on lettuce leaves.

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 ↓

Salad of Tomatoes Stuffed with Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Select small tomatoes of uniform size and peel them with a sharp knife.

  2. Set the peeled tomatoes on ice.

Make the filling

  1. Prepare tartare sauce and mix in the yolk of one egg.

  2. Finely chop the crisp and tender stalks of celery and mix thoroughly with the sauce.

  3. Hollow out the tomatoes and fill them with the celery mixture.

Serve

  1. Place each stuffed tomato on a crisp lettuce leaf and 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. 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. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + lettucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,019 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

Egg yolk
Emulsifies the tartare sauce, giving it a smooth, thick body that holds the filling together.
Celery stalks
Adds a crisp texture and fresh, slightly salty crunch to the filling.
Small tomatoes
Serve as the edible cups that hold the filling and add juicy moisture.

The step that matters

Peeling the tomatoes. Peel the tomatoes carefully with a sharp knife so the skin comes off cleanly and the flesh stays intact. Chilling them on ice firms the flesh, helping the tomato hold its shape when hollowed and filled.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, egg, sauce, 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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