Name: Stuffed Tomato Salad
Ingredients: Firm, raw tomatoes; Finely diced marinated meat; Cooked vegetables (your choice); Raw cucumbers; Onions; Watercress; Celery; Other greens or fruits (optional)

Why it works: Cucumber and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 140 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffed Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Hollow out the tomatoes from the stem end.
Skin the tomatoes by scalding them briefly or using a sharp knife.
Fill the hollowed tomatoes with the diced meat and your choice of vegetables, cucumbers, onions, watercress, celery, and any other greens or fruits.

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.

Cucumber + watercresstop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together140 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Watercress + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together167 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, meat, cucumber, watercress, celery):

Lettucefits better
Mustardfits better
Horseradishfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, meat, cucumber, watercress, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.