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Tomatoes and Nuts

A tomato sauce with walnuts, served over toast on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Tomatoes and Nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the tomatoes with the chicken stock for 30 minutes.

  2. Stir in the flour moistened with a little stock at the beginning.

  3. Strain the liquid and let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Reheat the strained liquid and add the walnuts, salt, pepper, butter, and beaten egg.

  2. Simmer for 1 minute and pour over the buttered toast on the lettuce leaves.

  3. Top each portion with a teaspoon of salted whipped cream and serve hot.

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. Tomato + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

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

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

Tomatoes
Provide the main body and acidic, fruity flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock-and-tomato liquid into a smooth sauce.
Egg
Beaten egg cooked gently in the hot liquid thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, savoury flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg. Egg thickens when heated but can scramble or curdle if the liquid boils. Keep the sauce at a gentle simmer while it is stirred, so it turns smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, walnut, pepper, butter, egg, 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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