Name: Tomatoes with Celery Stuffing, Served with Mayonnaise Dressing
Ingredients: 4 large tomatoes; 1 cup celery, finely chopped; ½ cup mayonnaise; Salt to taste; Crackers for serving

Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomatoes with Celery Stuffing, Served with Mayonnaise Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the tops off the tomatoes and scoop out the insides.

Make and fill

In a bowl, mix the chopped celery with mayonnaise and salt.
Stuff the tomatoes with the celery mixture.

Serve

Serve with crackers.

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.

Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes: Form the hollow shell that holds the filling and adds moisture and acidity.
Celery: Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch to the creamy filling.
Mayonnaise: Binds the chopped celery into a creamy filling and adds richness.

“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.