Skip to main content
Main

Tomatoes with Celery

Tomatoes are hollowed and filled with a celery and mayonnaise mixture, then topped with more dressing and served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Tomatoes with Celery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut a slice from the top of each tomato and scoop out the seeds and soft pulp without breaking the sides.

Fill and serve

  1. Cut the celery into small dice and mix it with the mayonnaise dressing.

  2. Fill the tomato shells with the celery mixture.

  3. Top each filled tomato with a teaspoon of mayonnaise dressing.

  4. Serve the tomatoes on a bed of lettuce leaves, placing three or four small leaves on each plate with the tomato in the center.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

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

Firm tomatoes
Serve as the hollow shells that hold the filling and give the dish its structure.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, crunchy contrast to the soft filling.
Mayonnaise dressing
Binds the diced celery into a creamy filling and adds richness and moisture.
Lettuce leaves
Provide a crisp, cool base that holds the tomato and adds freshness.

The step that matters

Scoop the tomatoes without breaking the sides. Tomato walls are thin and soft, so tearing them lets the filling leak out and weakens the shell. Cutting the top cleanly and scooping gently keeps the walls intact enough to hold the filling and stand upright on the plate.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipes