Name: Tomato Salad No. 3
Ingredients: 6 tomatoes; chopped celery (to taste); cucumber (to taste); parsley (to taste); onion (optional, to taste); lettuce leaves; Yellow Dressing (to taste)

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,409 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Salad No. 3

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

Skin the tomatoes and remove the heart.
Scoop out a little of the inside to create cups.
Chill the tomatoes on ice.

Fill and serve

Mix the scooped-out tomato with chopped celery, cucumber, parsley, and onion if desired.
Refill the tomato cups with the mixture.
Serve on lettuce leaves with Yellow 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.

Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together2,405 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned 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 cups and provide the juicy, mild base of the salad.
Celery: Adds a crisp texture to the filling.
Cucumber: Adds crunch and freshness to the filling.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, celery, cucumber, parsley, lettuce):

Carrotbetter flavor fit
Beetrootbetter flavor fit
Eggplantbetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, celery, cucumber, parsley, 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.