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Salad

Tomato and Cauliflower Salad

A salad of tomatoes, cauliflower, mayonnaise, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 151 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Tomato and Cauliflower Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the tomatoes.

  2. Scoop out some pulp from the stem end.

  3. Chill thoroughly.

Fill and serve

  1. Marinate small cubes of cold cauliflower in mayonnaise dressing.

  2. Pile the marinated cauliflower lightly into the center of the tomatoes.

  3. Serve each tomato on a lettuce leaf with a tablespoon of mayonnaise on top.

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. Cauliflower + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  3. Tomato + cauliflowertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together91 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Medium sized tomatoes
Hollowed shells that hold the salad and add juiciness and gentle acidity.
Cold cauliflower
Provides crisp, crunchy texture that contrasts with the soft tomato.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and richness, coating the cauliflower and carrying its flavour.

The step that matters

Chill thoroughly. Cold keeps the cauliflower crisp and the tomatoes firm, and it helps the mayonnaise stay stable and clinging, so the salad does not turn watery or soft before serving.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, 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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