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Salad

Tomato and Nut Salad

A salad made from tomato pulp, walnuts, green peppers, mayonnaise, and served in tomato shells on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Tomato and Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin from the tomatoes and scoop out the insides.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the drained pulp with an equal amount of chopped walnuts and ¼ cup chopped green peppers.

  2. Add mayonnaise dressing to the mixture.

Serve

  1. Refill the tomato shells with the mixture and serve on lettuce 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.

  1. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the hollow shells that hold the filling and the juicy pulp for the mixture.
Chopped walnuts
Add crunch and a rich, nutty texture that contrasts with the soft tomato.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and creaminess that binds the pulp, walnuts and peppers together.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, pepper, lettuce. 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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