Name: Onion and Tomato Salad
Ingredients: firm, ripe tomatoes (medium size); Spanish onion; plain salad dressing

Why it works: Tomato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Onion and Tomato Salad

Ingredients

firm, ripe tomatoes (medium size)
Spanish onion
plain salad dressing

Directions

Wipe the tomatoes and cut them into ¼-inch slices.
Peel the Spanish onion and slice it very thin.
Arrange the sliced onion and tomatoes in layers in a salad bowl.
Pour plain salad dressing over the layered vegetables.

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.

Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

Tomato Salad179 recipes

Chicken Salad623 recipes

Salad Dressing491 recipes

Cold Slaw160 recipes

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Onion and Tomato Salad