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Salad

Tomato and Celery Salad

A salad of tomatoes, celery, and hard‑boiled eggs dressed with olive oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tomato and Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the hard-boiled yolks of the eggs.

  2. Add salt, sugar, mustard, olive oil, and vinegar to the yolks and stir until smooth.

Assemble and serve

  1. Chop the tomatoes, celery, and hard-boiled whites of the eggs into fine pieces.

  2. Pour the dressing over the chopped ingredients and let it stand for a while before serving on lettuce.

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

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

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks mashed into the dressing add body and richness; whites add chopped bulk.
Olive oil
Adds fat that carries flavor and makes the dressing smooth and rich.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Tomatoes
Contribute moisture and fresh, slightly acidic flavor to the salad.
Dry mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that helps balance the richness of the egg and oil.

The step that matters

Stirring the yolks smooth before adding the oil. Mashing yolks thoroughly with the seasonings before adding oil and vinegar lets the yolk act as an emulsifier, so the dressing stays smooth rather than separating.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, egg, olive, vinegar, mustard, sugar):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, egg, olive, vinegar, mustard, sugar. 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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