Skip to main content
Salad

Stuffed Tomato Salad

A salad of tomatoes stuffed with sweetbread, celery, and mayonnaise, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Stuffed Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald the tomatoes, then drop them into cold water and peel.

  2. Scoop out the insides and place the tomatoes on ice until ready to serve.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the sweetbreads in salted water, then chop them.

  2. Mix the chopped sweetbreads with finely chopped celery and a little mayonnaise dressing.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the tomatoes with the mixture.

  2. Lay each tomato on a leaf of lettuce, dust with salt and pepper, and top with a teaspoon of mayonnaise.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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
Hollowed out to hold the filling, giving a cool, juicy shell for the salad.
Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, mild, rich filling that forms the body of the salad.
Celery
Adds a crisp texture that contrasts with the soft sweetbreads.
Mayonnaise dressing
Binds the filling and adds fat and creaminess for moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Peeling the scalded tomatoes. Scalding loosens the skin so it slips off cleanly. Leaving the tomatoes in cold water afterward stops them from cooking further, keeping them firm enough to hold the filling.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, celery, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, celery, pepper. 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 SaladTomato Salad179 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes