Name: Tomato Salad
Ingredients: 1 head of lettuce; 2-3 tomatoes; French dressing; 1 tablespoon mayonnaise

Why it works: Lettuce and tomato 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 Salad

Ingredients

1 head of lettuce
2-3 tomatoes
French dressing
1 tablespoon mayonnaise

Directions

Shred the lettuce and place it in a salad bowl.
Chop the tomatoes into half‑inch pieces and place them in the center of the lettuce.
Pour a little French dressing over the salad.
Add one tablespoon of mayonnaise on top 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.

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.

Lettuce + tomatotop 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