Skip to main content
Salad

Tomato and Celery Salad

A salad of tomatoes, celery, and hard‑boiled eggs dressed with olive oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, and sugar.

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

Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tomato and Celery Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard boiled eggs.

  2. Add salt, sugar, mustard, olive oil, and vinegar to the yolks and stir until smooth.

Assemble and serve

  1. Chop the tomatoes, celery, and hard boiled egg whites into fine pieces.

  2. Pour the dressing over the chopped ingredients and let it stand for a while before serving on 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.

  1. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled eggs
Yolks mashed into the dressing add richness and body; whites add texture to the salad.
Olive oil
Fat that emulsifies with the yolks to give the dressing a smooth, creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the yolks and oil.
Tomatoes
Provide moisture and fresh, slightly acidic flavor to the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a fresh, mildly savory note.

The step that matters

Stir the yolks smooth before adding the oil and vinegar. Mashing the yolks thoroughly and blending the dressing until smooth lets the oil and vinegar combine evenly with the yolks, which act as an emulsifier. Lumps or unblended oil make the dressing separate and taste uneven.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, egg, olive, vinegar, mustard, sugar):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, egg, olive, vinegar, mustard, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes