Name: Tomato Salad
Ingredients: medium-sized tomatoes; cabbage; celery; onion; coarse sea salt; black pepper; mayonnaise dressing; lettuce leaves

Why it works: Cabbage and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 622 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Select smooth, medium-sized tomatoes, peel them, and chill on ice.
Chop cabbage, celery, and onion finely, then season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Make a mayonnaise dressing and pour it over the chopped vegetables.
Scoop out the centers of the tomatoes and fill them with the chopped mixture.
Top each filled tomato with a spoonful of dressing and serve on lettuce leaves.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together622 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 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

Swap the onion

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

Mustardfits better
Capsicumfits better
Spinachfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cabbage, celery, pepper, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.