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Salad

Tomato and Celery Salad

A salad of peeled tomatoes filled with celery and parsley, dressed with Rorer dressing, served on crisp lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato and Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel the tomatoes and cut off the stem end.

  2. Carefully remove the seeds without breaking the tomatoes.

Make the filling

  1. Cut the white part of the celery into small pieces.

  2. Mix the chopped parsley with the Rorer dressing and add it to the celery.

  3. Fill the mixture into the tomatoes.

Serve

  1. Stand the tomatoes on a bed of crisp lettuce leaves and serve immediately.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  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. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. 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

Tomatoes
Form the hollow cups that hold the filling and provide the salad's juicy body.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild savory crunch to the filling.
Rorer dressing
Moistens and seasons the celery and parsley so the filling holds together and tastes bright.

The step that matters

Carefully remove the seeds without breaking the tomatoes. The tomato wall is thin and soft, so tearing it leaves no shell to hold the filling. Gentle scooping with a spoon keeps the cup intact and makes room for the filling.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, parsley, 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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