Name: Stuffed Tomatoes
Ingredients: fresh tomatoes; chopped nuts; onions; hard-boiled eggs; finely-cut parsley; flaked rice; coarse sea salt; black pepper

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stuffed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Scoop out the middle of the fresh tomatoes and mash it fine.
Pass the mashed tomato through a colander into a bowl.
Add chopped nuts, onions, hard-boiled eggs, finely-cut parsley, flaked rice, coarse sea salt, and black pepper to taste.
Stir all ingredients into a paste.
Fill the tomatoes with the stuffing and bake until heated through.
Alternatively, serve the stuffed tomatoes on lettuce leaves garnished with cress and nasturtium 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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,065 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, onion, egg, parsley, rice, pepper):

Black-eyed peafits better
Beansfits better
Chickpeafits better
Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, onion, egg, parsley, rice, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.