Skip to main content
Main

Tomato Pets

A tomato stuffed with chicken, mayonnaise, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce 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 ↓

Tomato Pets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut off the top slice of each tomato and scoop out the center.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the chicken, mustard, celery seed, salt, paprika, and egg yolks with mayonnaise dressing.

  2. Fill the tomatoes with the mixture.

  3. Sprinkle chopped parsley on top.

Serve

  1. Serve the filled tomatoes on lettuce leaves, garnished with egg white rings and an olive in the center.

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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Hollowed out to hold the filling; their flesh gives moisture and a fresh acidity.
Cooked chicken
Provides the protein and bulk of the filling.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy, crumbly texture to the filling.
Mayonnaise dressing
Binds the filling together and adds fat for a smooth, moist texture.
Celery seed
Adds a savoury, aromatic flavour that suits the chicken and egg.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, chicken, mustard, celery, egg, lettuce, olive. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes