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Salad

Vegetable Salad, California Style

A layered salad of onion, cucumber, tomato, breadcrumbs, olive oil, vinegar, parsley, and chives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Vegetable Salad, California Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Slice the onion finely.

  2. Peel the cucumbers, cut them in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, and slice them.

  3. Peel the tomatoes and slice them into ¼-inch thick slices.

Layer and chill

  1. Layer the onion, tomato, and cucumber in a salad bowl.

  2. Sprinkle each layer with breadcrumbs.

  3. Season each layer with salt, pepper, olive oil, and vinegar.

  4. Repeat the layering process for three more layers.

  5. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least two hours before serving.

Serve

  1. Before serving, sprinkle finely chopped parsley and chives on top.

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

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

  3. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the dressing and vinegar, soaking up liquid so the layers hold together.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the layers.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the vegetables and balances the oil.
Tomatoes
Supply juice and acidity that moisten the breadcrumbs during chilling.
Cucumbers
Add crisp texture and fresh moisture to the layers.
White sweet onion
Adds sharp aroma and bite that mellows during chilling.

The step that matters

Refrigerate for at least two hours. Chilling lets the salt, vinegar and oil draw flavour into the vegetables and softens the breadcrumbs, so the layers meld. Serving too soon leaves the salad dry and sharp.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, tomato, bread, pepper, olive, vinegar, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, tomato, bread, pepper, olive, vinegar, 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.

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