Name: Tomato Salad
Ingredients: large, smooth tomatoes; cold water; small onion, finely chopped; parsley, finely chopped; cress, finely chopped; mayonnaise dressing; lettuce leaves or cress for garnish

Why it works: Parsley and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,483 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Scald the tomatoes, then quickly skin them.
Drop the skinned tomatoes into cold water to chill.
Slice the tomatoes and layer them in a salad bowl.
In between the layers, add the chopped onion, parsley, and cress mixed with mayonnaise dressing.
Garnish with lettuce leaves or cress.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together1,483 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together1,655 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,562 recipes

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

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together20,633 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).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

Okrabetter flavor fit
Cucumberbetter flavor fit
Eggplantbetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, parsley, lettuce. 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).