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Salad

Meat Salad

A salad of finely chopped cold meat mixed with ketchup, olive oil, vinegar, and salt, stuffed into tomatoes and served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Meat Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the cold meat finely.

  2. Combine the meat, tomato ketchup, salt, and olive oil in a bowl. Mix thoroughly.

  3. Gradually add the vinegar and mix again.

Fill and serve

  1. Peel and scoop out the centers of the tomatoes.

  2. Fill the tomatoes with the meat mixture.

  3. Cover with chopped parsley.

  4. Serve on lettuce leaves.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  3. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  4. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the salad its substance.
Olive oil
Adds fat and moisture, coating the meat and carrying flavor through the filling.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil.
Tomatoes
Serve as hollow edible cups that hold the filling and add moisture and acidity.

The step that matters

Gradually add the vinegar and mix again. Vinegar is added to an oil-based mixture, which can separate. Adding it slowly while mixing thoroughly helps it disperse evenly so the acidity is spread through the filling rather than pooling in spots.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, tomato, ketchup, olive, vinegar, lettuce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, tomato, ketchup, olive, vinegar, 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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