Why it works: Tomato and lettuce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,655 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓
Tomato Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the tomatoes
Use tomatoes of uniform size.
Pour boiling water over the tomatoes to remove the skins.
Let the tomatoes cool to become firm.
Assemble and serve
Select small curled leaves of lettuce to form a bed for each tomato.
Slice each tomato and replace the slices to make the tomato whole again.
Place each tomato in a lettuce bed and top with a generous amount of stiff mayonnaise.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,655 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
What each ingredient does
- Tomatoes
- Provide the main body and fresh, slightly acidic flavor of the salad.
- Lettuce
- Forms a crisp, cool bed that holds each tomato in place.
- Mayonnaise
- Adds richness and fat, balancing the acidity of the tomatoes.
The step that matters
Let the tomatoes cool to become firm. Blanching softens the tomato flesh, and slicing it while still warm makes it collapse and weep. Cooling lets the flesh firm up so the slices hold their shape under the mayonnaise.
“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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