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Salad

Raw Tomatoes

Raw tomatoes sliced and served with salt, pepper, sugar, vinegar, or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Raw Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the tomatoes, removing as little flesh as possible with the skin.

  2. Cut the tomatoes into slices ¼ inch thick.

  3. Let the slices stand in the refrigerator for 15 minutes before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve with salad dressing or a mixture of salt, pepper, sugar, and vinegar, or with sugar and cream.

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 + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and fresh, juicy flesh of the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a mild, smooth fat to balance the acidity of the tomatoes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the tomatoes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the tomatoes' acidity.

The step that matters

Pare the tomatoes thinly. Removing the skin takes off as little flesh as possible because the flesh just beneath the skin is where much of the tomato's juice and flavour sits. Cutting away too much wastes the best part of the fruit.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, sugar, vinegar, cream):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, vinegar, cream. 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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