Name: Tomato and Shrimp Salad
Ingredients: medium sized tomatoes; coarse sea salt; shrimp, cut up; celery, chopped; mayonnaise; lettuce

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Tomato and Shrimp Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes by cutting a thin slice from the top and removing the seeds and pulp.
Sprinkle the inside with coarse sea salt and invert; let stand for 30 minutes.
In a bowl, mix equal parts of cut-up shrimp and chopped celery with mayonnaise.
Fill the tomatoes with the shrimp and celery mixture, adding a spoonful of mayonnaise on top.
Arrange the stuffed tomatoes on a bed of lettuce.

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.

Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + shrimptop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,689 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Shrimp + lettucetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together430 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).