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Salad

Tomato Salad

A fresh salad of sliced tomatoes, onions, garlic, chillies, and vinegar, dressed with olive oil and garnished with endive, beetroot, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Tomato Salad

Why it works: Endive and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 132 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tomato Salad

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the tomatoes with a sharp knife.

  2. Layer the tomato slices in a deep dish with minced onion, garlic, chillies, and a dusting of salt.

Dress and garnish

  1. Mix equal parts of vinegar and olive oil, then pour over the salad.

  2. Garnish with chopped endive, shaped beetroot pieces, and slices of hard-boiled eggs.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

  1. Endive + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and juiciness of the salad.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the dressing.
Best vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the tomatoes and balances the oil.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add protein-rich richness and a soft, creamy texture as a garnish.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, garlic, vinegar, olive, endive, beetroot, egg):

  1. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  2. Cucumberbetter flavor fit
  3. Chivebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, garlic, vinegar, olive, endive, beetroot, egg. 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).

“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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