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Salad

Tomato Salad

A salad of tomato cups filled with cabbage, seasoned, and topped with a creamy dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Tomato Salad

Why it works: Cabbage and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 622 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomato cups

  1. Remove the insides of the large tomatoes to create cups.

  2. In each cup, place the finely chopped cabbage seasoned with celery salt, a dash of pepper, coarse sea salt, and vinegar.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, cover the tomato pulp with water and boil until soft.

  2. Strain the pulp, then add butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour to the consistency of cream.

Serve

  1. Serve the salad on lettuce leaves.

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.

  1. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 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

Large tomatoes
Form the cups and, once boiled and strained, the pulp that becomes the dressing.
Flour
Thickens the strained tomato pulp to a creamy consistency.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Finely chopped cabbage
Provides the crisp, fresh filling inside each tomato cup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the cabbage filling.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour to the consistency of cream.. Flour must be stirred in evenly and cooked through, or it stays floury or forms lumps. Starch thickens the liquid only as it heats, so the dressing reaches the right body only after it has simmered.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, celery, pepper, vinegar, butter, flour, lettuce):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, celery, pepper, vinegar, butter, flour, 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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