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Salad

Vegetable Salad

A chilled salad of tomato cups filled with chopped vegetables, served on lettuce with mayonnaise or dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Vegetable Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel the tomatoes, cut around the top, and scoop out the insides without breaking the cup.

  2. Chop equal amounts of celery, cabbage, cucumbers, green peppers, and onion if using.

  3. Season the chopped vegetables lightly with salt and pepper, then let them drain.

  4. Mix all the chopped vegetables together and fill each tomato cup.

  5. Serve on fresh lettuce leaves with mayonnaise or cooked dressing.

  6. Keep the vegetables cold during preparation.

  7. Scald the tomatoes quickly, then plunge them into cold water.

  8. Place the other vegetables on ice until ready to chop.

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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 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 edible cups that hold the chopped vegetable filling.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mild crunch to the filling.
Cabbage
Contributes crispness that holds its texture against the moist vegetables.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess that softens the sharp, crisp vegetables.

The step that matters

Scalding the tomatoes. Brief heat softens the tomato skin so it peels easily, while longer heating softens the walls so the cups tear. The cold water stops the cooking so the cups stay firm enough to fill.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, celery, cabbage, cucumber, pepper, lettuce):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, celery, cabbage, cucumber, pepper, lettuce. 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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