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Salad

Celery and Tomato Salad

A salad of tomatoes filled with a celery and salt mixture, topped with French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,377 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery and Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel the tomatoes and cut a slice from the stem end.

  2. Remove the center of the tomatoes and mix it with the chopped celery and salt.

  3. Refill the tomatoes with the mixture.

Serve

  1. Place tender white celery leaves on a plate and set the tomatoes in the center.

  2. Chill on ice before serving.

  3. Pour French dressing over each tomato just before serving.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Form the main body of the salad and provide juicy, slightly acidic flavor.
Celery
Adds a crisp texture that contrasts with the soft tomato flesh.
French dressing
Adds moisture and tangy, sweet-sharp flavor to the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Refill the tomatoes with the mixture. Tomato flesh is mostly water, and salt draws moisture out of it. Keeping the filling mixed and the dressing added just before serving helps prevent the salad from becoming watery and soggy.

“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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