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Salad

Breakfast or Lunch Salad

A fresh salad of tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, and spring onions dressed with oil and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Breakfast or Lunch Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour boiling water over the tomatoes to skin them.

  2. Place the skinned tomatoes in cold water to cool, then drain and dry them.

  3. Cut the tomatoes into sections like an orange.

  4. Slice the cucumber and break the lettuce leaves into small pieces.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine all ingredients in a salad bowl.

  2. Sprinkle spring onions over the salad, add oil and vinegar or dressing, and mix well.

  3. Serve immediately.

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

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

  3. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,050 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

Ripe tomatoes
Provide the main body and juice of the salad, with skins removed for a softer bite.
Cucumber
Adds cool, crisp texture and fresh bulk to the salad.
Cleaned lettuce leaves
Provide a crisp, leafy base that holds the other pieces together.
Oil
Adds fat and smoothness, carrying flavour across the leaves and vegetables.
Vinegar or salad dressing
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the tomatoes after cooling. Wet tomato pieces dilute the oil and vinegar and make the salad watery, so the dressing does not cling properly. Drying them well keeps the dressing concentrated on the surfaces.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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