Name: A Good Salad
Ingredients: 1 tomato, not over-ripe; 1 small onion; salt, to taste; pepper, to taste; vinegar, to taste

Why it works: Tomato and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 17,913 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the tomato as you would a cucumber.
Finely chop the onion and sprinkle it over the tomato slices.
Add salt, pepper, and vinegar to taste.

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 + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together17,913 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + oniontop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together20,622 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together27,805 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together68,463 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together18,203 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomato: Supplies the juicy body and mild sweetness of the salad.
Onion: Adds sharp aroma and bite that contrasts with the sweet tomato.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the tomato and onion.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Cucumberbetter flavor fit
Carrotbetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

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

“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.