Name: Tomato Baskets with Sweetbreads
Ingredients: 1 large pair of sweetbreads; mayonnaise; 4 large tomatoes; lettuce leaves

Why it works: Tomato and lettuce 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 Baskets with Sweetbreads

Ingredients

1 large pair of sweetbreads
mayonnaise
4 large tomatoes
lettuce leaves

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

Boil and blanch the sweetbreads, then remove the skin and cut them into small dice.
Mix the diced sweetbreads with a little mayonnaise.

Assemble and serve

Hollow out the tomatoes to create baskets, as directed in the recipe for Tomato Baskets with Green Peas.
Fill the tomato baskets with the sweetbread mixture.
Arrange the filled tomatoes on lettuce leaves.
Top each tomato with an additional spoonful of mayonnaise 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.

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 + lettucetop 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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads: Provide the main filling, with a tender, mild texture once boiled and diced.
Mayonnaise: Binds the diced sweetbreads and adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Tomatoes: Form the edible baskets that hold the filling, adding acidity and freshness.

“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.