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Salad

Artichoke and Tomato Salad

A salad of boiled artichoke bottoms, sliced tomatoes, cucumber, tarragon, Spanish onion, and salad cream or mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 135 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Artichoke and Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the artichokes

  1. Wash the artichoke bottoms in cold water.

  2. Boil them in salted water until tender, then drain.

  3. Allow the artichokes to cool completely, then slice them.

Assemble and serve

  1. Layer the artichoke slices and raw tomato slices in a glass dish or shallow salad bowl.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped tarragon and Spanish onion.

  3. Garnish with sliced cucumber and serve with salad cream or mayonnaise.

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. Artichoke + cucumbertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Artichoke + tarragontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together391 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Artichoke bottoms
Provide the tender, mild body that makes up most of the salad.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and a light acidity that brightens the artichoke.
Tarragon
Adds a sweet, anise-like aroma.
Spanish onion
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the creamy dressing.
Salad cream or mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess, giving the salad its richness and moisture.

The step that matters

Cool the artichokes completely before slicing. Artichokes are soft while hot and break apart easily. Once cooled they firm up, so the slices keep their shape when layered.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, tomato, tarragon, cucumber, cream):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, tomato, tarragon, cucumber, cream. 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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