Name: Whole Tomato Salad
Ingredients: smooth tomatoes; celery; lettuce; red peppers; cucumbers; shrimps; mayonnaise; green peppers

Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,409 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Whole Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Peel the tomatoes carefully and scoop out the insides with a small spoon.
Finely chop the celery, lettuce, red peppers, and cucumbers.
Mix the chopped vegetables with the shrimps and mayonnaise.
Fill the tomatoes with the mixture.
Decorate with rings of green peppers and a spoonful of mayonnaise on top.

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.

Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,409 recipes

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

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together2,405 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the celery

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

Tarragonbetter flavor fit
Dillabout as good a flavor fit
Capersabout as good a flavor fit
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, lettuce, pepper, cucumber, shrimp. 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).