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
Scoop out the insides of the tomatoes.
Chop the insides with hard-boiled eggs, nuts, and celery.
Fill the tomatoes with the mixture.
Serve on lettuce leaves with your preferred dressing.
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.
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Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,033 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,377 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,655 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together174 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
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Nuts + celerytop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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):
- Beansfits better
- Chickpeafits better
- Lentilsfits better
- 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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