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Salad

Tomato and Cucumber Salad

A salad of tomatoes stuffed with cucumber, onion, and celery, served on lettuce with French dressing and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato and Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the tomatoes nicely, cut off the tops, and remove the seeds without breaking the cells.

  2. Chop the cucumbers, a little onion, and celery if desired.

Assemble and serve

  1. Marinate the chopped vegetables with French dressing.

  2. Stuff the tomatoes with the vegetable mixture.

  3. Place the stuffed tomatoes on lettuce leaves and serve with mayonnaise.

  4. Add a red radish on the plate for garnish.

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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Medium size smooth tomatoes
Serve as the hollow cups that hold the vegetable filling.
Cucumbers
Add crisp, watery texture and fresh body to the filling.
French dressing
Seasons the chopped vegetables and adds acidity and moisture during marinating.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and fat to balance the acidity of the dressing and vegetables.

The step that matters

Removing the seeds without breaking the tomato cells. Tomato walls are thin, and tearing them makes the shell leak and collapse under the filling. Keeping the cups intact holds the stuffing and keeps the salad neat.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, cucumber, onion, lettuce, radish):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, cucumber, onion, lettuce, radish. 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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