Name: Tomato Salad No. 1
Ingredients: 6 tomatoes; 1 tablespoon onion juice; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 1 tablespoon cold cooked meat, chopped very fine; vinegar or salad dressing; lettuce leaves; mayonnaise

Why it works: Parsley and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,483 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Tomato Salad No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

Skin the tomatoes and cut out the heart.
Scoop out a little of the inside and mix it with onion juice, chopped parsley, and cold cooked meat.

Fill and serve

Refill the tomato cups with the mixture.
Serve on lettuce leaves with a little mayonnaise on top.
Either serve with a little vinegar or salad dressing.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together20,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together5,398 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 cups that hold the filling and provide the fresh, juicy base of the salad.
Cold cooked meat: Adds savoury, meaty flavour and substance to the filling.
Onion juice: Adds sharp, aromatic flavour to the filling.
Mayonnaise: Adds richness and fat that softens the acidity of the tomato.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, meat, vinegar, lettuce):

Garlicbetter flavor fit
Tarragonbetter flavor fit
Capersbetter flavor fit
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, meat, vinegar, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.