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Dressed Tomatoes

Tomatoes filled with a mixture of boiled potato, cucumber, parsley, mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Dressed Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Cut a round piece from the top of each tomato, about the size of a shilling.

  2. Remove the seeds and membranes without breaking the skin.

  3. Dust the inside of the tomatoes with a little salt, pepper, and vinegar.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the potato and cucumber into small pieces.

  2. Mix the potato, cucumber, parsley, pepper, salt, and mayonnaise together.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the tomatoes with the mixture.

  2. Smooth a little mayonnaise on top and serve on lace paper or a folded napkin.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Hollowed out to hold the filling, providing the fresh, juicy base of the dish.
Potato
Adds body and a soft, starchy texture to the filling.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and moisture, binding the filling together and giving a creamy texture.
Cucumber
Adds crisp texture and a cool, watery freshness to the filling.

The step that matters

Remove the seeds and membranes without breaking the skin. The tomato shell must stay intact to hold the filling. Tearing the skin lets the mixture leak out and makes the tomato hard to serve neatly.

Swap the potato

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

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

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