Name: Mock Tomato Salad
Ingredients: desired number of apples; vegetable coloring; chopped nuts; celery; mayonnaise; lettuce

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,033 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Mock Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Core and peel the apples, ensuring they do not cook up.
Color a syrup deeply red with vegetable coloring.
Cook the apples slowly, two or three at a time, until they are tomato colored, being careful not to cook them long enough to become soft.
Fill the centers of the apples with a mixture of chopped nuts and celery combined with mayonnaise.
Top each apple with a spoonful of mayonnaise and serve on lettuce.

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.

Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together174 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,155 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Apple + lettucetop 14% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together515 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Nuts + celerytop 16% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together169 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, celery, lettuce):

Chestnutbetter flavor fit
Beansbetter flavor fit
Walnutbetter flavor fit
Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, celery, lettuce. 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).