Name: Tomato and Chive Salad
Ingredients: 1 small tomato; Mayonnaise; finely chopped chives; 1 lettuce leaf

Why it works: Chive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 261 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tomato and Chive Salad

Ingredients

1 small tomato
Mayonnaise
finely chopped chives
1 lettuce leaf

Directions

Prepare the tomato

Remove the skin from the tomato.
Chill the tomato and cut it in half crosswise.

Assemble and serve

Spread the halves with mayonnaise.
Sprinkle with finely chopped chives.
Serve on a lettuce leaf.

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.

Chive + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together261 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,655 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + chivetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together538 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomato: Provides the main body, moisture and mild acidity of the salad.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and richness, and a creamy texture that coats the tomato.