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Salad

Tomato Salad with Nuts

A tomato salad served on lettuce and bread, topped with roasted peanuts and a dressing of salt, mustard, sugar, egg yolks, sweet cream, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Salad with Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Place the tomatoes on lettuce leaves on bread and butter plates.

  2. Scoop out the stem end of each tomato to form a small cup.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, mix salt, mustard, sugar, egg yolks, and sweet cream together.

  2. Add vinegar and cook over boiling water, stirring constantly until done.

Assemble and serve

  1. Just before serving, fill the cup with roasted peanuts.

  2. Assemble the salad just before serving to maintain flavor.

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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Lettuce + peanuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they cook and bind it into a smooth emulsion.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Roasted peanuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor against the soft tomato.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing gently over boiling water, stirring constantly. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating or leaving them unstirred can scramble them into lumps. Constant stirring over gentle steam heat lets the custard-like dressing set smoothly.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, bread, butter, peanut, mustard, sugar, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, bread, butter, peanut, mustard, sugar, egg. 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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