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Salad

Vegetable Salad, California Style

A layered salad of sliced onion, cucumber, and tomato dressed with olive oil, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Vegetable Salad, California Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the onion finely.

  2. Peel the cucumbers, cut them in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, and slice them.

  3. Peel the tomatoes and slice them into ¼ inch thick slices.

Layer and chill

  1. In a salad bowl, layer the onion, then the tomato, and then the cucumbers, sprinkling each layer with bread crumbs and seasoning with salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar.

  2. Repeat the layering process two more times.

  3. Cover the bowl and set it in a cool place for at least two hours before serving.

  4. Before serving, sprinkle finely chopped parsley and chives on top.

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 + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  4. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main juicy body and acidity of the salad.
Cucumbers
Add moisture and a crisp, cooling texture to the layers.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the dressing and juices, giving the layers body and texture.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness that carries the flavour of the vegetables.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the vegetables and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Resting the layered salad in a cool place. At least two hours lets the salt draw juice from the vegetables and the bread crumbs soak up the dressing, so the flavours blend and the layers hold together.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, tomato, bread, pepper, olive, vinegar, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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