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Deviled Tomatoes

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Deviled Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scoop out the insides of the tomatoes.

  2. Chop the insides with hard-boiled eggs, nuts, and celery.

  3. Fill the tomatoes with the mixture.

  4. Serve on lettuce leaves with your preferred dressing.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  4. Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Nuts + celerytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, egg, celery, lettuce):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, egg, celery, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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