Name: Tomato Salad
Ingredients: small smooth tomatoes; ice; lettuce leaves; mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Tomato and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,655 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Salad

Ingredients

small smooth tomatoes
ice
lettuce leaves
mayonnaise dressing

Directions

Prepare

Peel the tomatoes, slicing them nearly through but keeping their shape.
Place the tomatoes on ice.

Serve

When ready to serve, place each tomato in a shell of lettuce leaves.
Pour a large spoonful of mayonnaise dressing over each tomato.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 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

Small smooth tomatoes: Provide the main body of the salad, and their shape is kept by slicing them nearly through.
Lettuce leaves: Form a crisp, edible shell that holds each tomato and adds freshness.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds richness and fat, coating the tomato with a creamy, savoury layer.

“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.