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Salad

Tomato Salad with Cucumbers

A fresh salad of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley, olive oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tomato Salad with Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the tomatoes, then season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Slice the cucumbers, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and set aside for 20 minutes.

  3. Press out the water from the cucumbers and combine them in a salad bowl with the tomatoes.

Dress and serve

  1. Add the chopped parsley, olive oil, and vinegar, then mix gently without breaking the tomatoes.

  2. For a variation, add a light mayonnaise sauce with mustard and cream, if desired.

  3. Garnish with lettuce hearts before serving.

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 + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and juice of the salad, with acidity and fresh flavour.
Cucumbers
Add crisp texture and a cooling, watery crunch to the salad.
Olive oil
Adds fat and carries flavour across the tomatoes and cucumbers.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the salt and oil.

The step that matters

Pressing out the cucumber water. Salting cucumbers draws out their water through osmosis. If that liquid is not pressed out before mixing, it dilutes the dressing and makes the salad watery and bland.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cucumber, pepper, parsley, olive, vinegar, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Lettucefits about as well
  3. Eggplantfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cucumber, pepper, parsley, olive, vinegar, sauce. 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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