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Salad

Tomato Flowers

A chilled tomato salad with hard‑boiled egg, mayonnaise, caviar, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,655 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Flowers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the tomatoes and chill them on ice.

  2. Cut five-pointed flower-like petals from the top of each tomato, leaving a straight piece in the center.

  3. Pass the yolks and whites of the hard-boiled eggs through a sieve.

Assemble

  1. Place some egg white around the bottom of the tomato center, then add the powdered yolk.

  2. Top the tomato center with stiff mayonnaise and place a piece of Russian caviar in the center.

  3. On the point of each petal, place stiff mayonnaise with a small piece of Russian caviar in the center.

Serve

  1. Serve the tomatoes on small lettuce leaves, chilled.

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

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

  2. Egg + caviartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together101 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Caviar + lettucetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Egg + lettucetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Tomato + caviartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Serve as the firm, chilled base that holds the flower-shaped garnish.
Hard boiled eggs
Provide the powdered white and yolk that form the filling at the center.
Stiff mayonnaise
Adds richness and fat and holds the caviar in place on the tomato and petals.
Russian caviar
Adds a salty, briny accent as the final decorative topping.

The step that matters

Pass the yolks and whites through a sieve. Pushing the cooked egg through a sieve breaks it into fine, even crumbs, so it sits smoothly and looks like a powder rather than lumps. Cooked egg that is not finely divided stays clumpy and does not hold a neat shape on the tomato.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, caviar, 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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