Name: Tomato Salad
Ingredients: tomatoes; juice of lemons or white vinegar; sugar; pepper; salt; salad dressing; chopped parsley; hard-boiled eggs

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,037 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and season

Skin and slice the tomatoes.
Pour the juice of lemons or white vinegar over the tomatoes.
Sprinkle with sugar, pepper, and salt to taste.
Alternatively, pour over a salad dressing.

Garnish and serve

Garnish with chopped parsley and sliced 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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together5,398 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes: Form the body of the salad and release juice that mingles with the dressing.
Lemon juice or white vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the tomatoes and balances the sugar.
Sugar: Adds a little sweetness that rounds out the acidity.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add rich, mild protein and body as a garnish.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, lemon, sugar, pepper, egg):

Parsleythe original
Corianderabout as good a flavor fit
Basilabout as good a flavor fit
Dillabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, lemon, sugar, pepper, 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.