Skip to main content
Salad

Stuffed Tomato Salad

A salad of tomatoes hollowed and filled with diced cucumber and cream dressing, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Stuffed Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Scald the tomatoes to easily remove the skins.

  2. Cut a slice from the top of each tomato and remove the seeds with a small spoon.

Make the filling

  1. Peel the cucumbers and cut them into small dice.

  2. Season the diced cucumbers with salt and pepper, then mix with half of the cream dressing.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the tomato cups with the cucumber mixture and add another spoonful of dressing on top.

  2. Sprinkle finely chopped parsley over the stuffed tomatoes and serve on a bed of 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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  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

Ripe tomatoes
Form the hollow cups that hold the filling and provide the juicy base of the salad.
Cucumbers
Add a crisp, cool texture and moisture to the filling.
Cream dressing
Adds richness and moisture, binding the cucumber filling and keeping it from drying out.

The step that matters

Scalding the tomatoes. Brief immersion in hot water loosens the skin so it lifts off cleanly. Leaving them too long can soften the flesh and make the cups collapse when filled.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, cucumber, lettuce, pepper, parsley):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, cucumber, lettuce, pepper, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes