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Lettuce and Tomato Salad

A salad of lettuce and tomatoes topped with mayonnaise and garnished with chopped chives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 261 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lettuce and Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Clean the lettuce.

  2. Chill the lettuce in the refrigerator.

  3. Cut the lettuce into quarters.

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel and core the tomatoes.

  2. Scoop out a small cavity in each tomato.

  3. Fill the cavity of each tomato with mayonnaise.

Assemble and serve

  1. Serve a quarter of the lettuce with each tomato on a salad plate.

  2. Garnish with chopped chives.

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. Lettuce + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together261 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + chivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lettuce + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + chivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together538 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage lettuce
Provides a crisp, cool leaf base that contrasts with the soft tomato.
Tomatoes
Supply the main body, juice and fresh acidity of the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and fat that balances the tomato's acidity.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, lettuce, chive. 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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