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Salad

Crab and Tomato Salad

A salad of tomatoes stuffed with crab meat, chilled, served on lettuce with mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Crab and Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Carefully remove the skin and centers from the tomatoes.

  2. Fill the hollowed tomatoes with the chopped and seasoned crab meat.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill the stuffed tomatoes in the ice for several hours.

  2. Serve on crisp lettuce leaves and top each tomato with a spoonful of mayonnaise 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

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

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

  2. Meat + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Crab + lettucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Tomato + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,438 recipes

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

  5. Meat + lettucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together579 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Firm tomatoes
Form the hollow shell that holds the filling and gives the salad its structure.
Crab meat
Provides the main filling, adding savoury flavour and a tender, flaky texture.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds richness and fat that softens the flavour and moistens the crab.

The step that matters

Chill the stuffed tomatoes in the ice for several hours. Keeping the tomatoes cold firms the filling and keeps the crab and dressing fresh, while the tomato walls stay crisp rather than going watery.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, crab, 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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