Name: Stuffed Tomato Salad
Ingredients: fancy red ripe tomatoes; shaved ice; coarse sea salt; celery salad; mayonnaise; capers; beets; curly lettuce leaves

Why it works: Capers and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffed Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Wash and dry the tomatoes.
Insert a column tube about 1 inch in diameter into the stem end of each tomato.
Scald and peel the tomatoes.
Cover them with shaved ice and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.
When slightly frozen on the outside, dig out the center with a vegetable scoop.
Fill the cavity with celery salad.
Top with a spoonful of mayonnaise and garnish with capers and fancy-shaped beets.
Serve on a curly lettuce leaf.

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.

Capers + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together372 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Celery + caperstop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together405 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).