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Salad

Tomato and String Bean Salad

A salad of tomatoes filled with string beans, peppers, onions, and mayonnaise, served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato and String Bean Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel the tomatoes, cut off the tops, and scoop out the centers to form cups.

Make the filling

  1. Cut the cold boiled string beans into small pieces.

  2. Mix the string beans with a tablespoon each of chopped Spanish peppers, green peppers, and Spanish onions.

  3. Combine the mixture with mayonnaise and fill the tomato cups.

Finish and serve

  1. Top each filled tomato with an additional tablespoon of mayonnaise.

  2. Place the tomato cups on lettuce leaves and serve.

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 + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  2. Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together500 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 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

Mayonnaise
Adds richness and moisture, binding the chopped vegetables into a creamy filling.
String beans
Provide the main bulk and a firm, crisp-tender bite to the filling.
Tomatoes
Serve as the edible cups that hold the filling and add juicy acidity.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, beans, pepper, lettuce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, beans, pepper, 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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