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Tomato Salad

A tomato-based salad with cabbage, celery salt, pepper, and a butter‑flour thickened dressing served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Tomato Salad

Why it works: Cabbage and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 622 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cups

  1. Remove the insides of the large tomatoes to create cups.

  2. In each tomato cup, place the finely chopped cabbage seasoned with celery salt, black pepper, coarse sea salt, and vinegar.

Make the sauce

  1. Cover the tomato pulp with water and boil until soft.

  2. Strain the pulp.

  3. Add butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Thicken the mixture with flour to a cream-like consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together622 recipes

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

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,081 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

Large tomatoes
Form the cups and supply the pulp that is cooked into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the strained pulp into a creamy consistency.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the cabbage filling.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour. Flour must be stirred in gradually so it hydrates evenly; adding it all at once can form lumps and leave the cream-like texture uneven.

Flavor stand-ins for the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, celery, pepper, vinegar, butter, flour, lettuce):

  1. Mustardbetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Cucumberbetter flavor fit
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, celery, pepper, vinegar, butter, flour, lettuce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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