Name: Tomato Salad, Hesketh Style
Ingredients: Tomatoes; Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; Finely chopped parsley; 1 hard boiled egg yolk; Oil; Vinegar; Cream

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 34,122 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Tomato Salad, Hesketh Style

Ingredients

Directions

Peel the tomatoes and slice them into ¼ inch thick slices.
Layer the slices in a dish, seasoning each layer with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Set the dish in a cool place for 30 minutes, tilting it to gather the juice occasionally.
Transfer the tomatoes to a salad bowl and sprinkle with finely chopped parsley.
Mash the yolk of the hard boiled egg and mix it with oil, vinegar, and cream.
Season the dressing with salt and pepper, then pour it over the tomatoes before serving.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together5,398 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Tomato + vinegartop 16% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together5,063 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper, egg, vinegar, cream):

Tarragonbetter flavor fit
Dillabout as good a flavor fit
Parsleythe original
Celeryabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper, egg, vinegar, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).