Name: Tomato Salad
Ingredients: 6 ripe red tomatoes; 2 tablespoons olive oil; 1 tablespoon vinegar; salt to taste; pepper to taste; optional: sliced onions; optional: cold potatoes; optional: chopped parsley; optional: garlic

Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,058 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Slice the tomatoes, removing the core and seeds if desired.
In a bowl, combine the tomatoes with olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.
If using, add sliced onions and cold potatoes.

Present

For presentation, shape the potatoes into a dome in the center of the dish.
Sprinkle chopped parsley over the potatoes, and arrange sliced onions and tomatoes around the base.
Optionally, rub the serving dish with a clove of garlic for flavor.

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.

Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together29,058 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together15,539 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together25,665 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
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

Ripe red tomatoes: Provide the main body, juice and fresh flavour of the salad.
Olive oil: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the tomatoes.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the tomatoes and balances the oil.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, olive, vinegar, pepper, potato, parsley, garlic):

Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Eggplantbetter flavor fit
Broccolibetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, olive, vinegar, pepper, potato, parsley, garlic. 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.