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Tomato Cocktails

A chilled tomato and pepper mixture topped with French dressing and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Cocktails

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove seeds from tomatoes and dice the pulp.

  2. Chop the onion finely and soak it in cold water for 15 minutes, then drain.

  3. Combine the diced tomatoes, chopped onion, and chopped peppers in a bowl.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill cocktail glasses with the mixture and pour French dressing over each.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve very cold.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the juicy, acidic base that forms the body of the cocktail.
Peppers
Add crisp texture and a fresh, slightly bitter vegetal flavour.
Onion
Adds sharp pungency; soaking in cold water mellows its harshness and sulphur bite.
French dressing
Supplies fat, acidity and seasoning that coat the vegetables and carry flavour.

The step that matters

Soaking the onion. Soaking finely chopped onion in cold water draws out some of its sharp sulphur compounds, giving a milder taste. Draining well keeps the cocktail from tasting watery or overly harsh.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, parsley. 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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