Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓
Tomates En Mayonnaise
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Prepare the tomatoes as for Tomato Salad and chill them on ice until very cold.
If using, prepare Mayonnaise or Mustard Sauce by adding the yolk of 1 egg to the mustard.
Hollow out a small place from the top of each tomato, ensuring they are uniform in size and shape.
Assemble and serve
Arrange the tomatoes on a flat dish surrounded by pale green lettuce leaves.
Fill the hollow in each tomato with the dressing and serve very cold.
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.
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Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,356 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,655 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
-
Tomato + mustardtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,482 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
- Tomatoes
- Serve as the cups that hold the dressing, with their juice and flesh giving freshness.
- Egg yolk
- Emulsifies the oil and mustard into a thick, creamy dressing.
The step that matters
Hollowing the tomatoes. Cutting too deep can break the tomato wall, and uneven cups let dressing spill out. Very cold tomatoes are firmer and easier to hollow cleanly, which keeps each one a neat, uniform shape.
Swap the tomato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, mustard):
- Horseradishfits better
- Beetrootfits better
- Broccolifits better
- Tomatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, mustard. 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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