Name: Tomato Salad, Plain
Ingredients: Tomatoes; Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; Olive oil; Vinegar; Celery

Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 15,539 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tomato Salad, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Peel and slice the tomatoes.
Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, olive oil, and vinegar.
Garnish with finely sliced celery.

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.

Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together15,539 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Olive + celerytop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together4,667 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the celery

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

Basilbetter flavor fit
Garlicbetter flavor fit
Thymebetter flavor fit
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, olive, vinegar. 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).