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Poinsettia Salad

A tomato salad with salad dressing and celery seed, garnished with celery or parsley.

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 ↓

Poinsettia Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel the tomatoes carefully and cut them in half, stopping an inch from the stem end to keep them intact.

  2. Cut each half into three parts, again stopping an inch from the stem end.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the tomatoes on a salad plate, stem end down, and flatten the cut portions to form petals.

  2. Add a large dot of salad dressing in the center of each tomato and sprinkle with celery seed.

  3. Arrange celery stalks and leaves or parsley around the plate for decoration.

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
Provide the main body of the salad, and their cut segments form the flower-like petals.
Salad dressing
Adds moisture, richness and tang to the center of each tomato.
Celery seed
Adds a mild, savory aroma that complements the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Cutting the tomatoes without separating them. Stopping about an inch short of the stem end keeps each tomato in one piece, so the cut sections stay joined and can fan out into petals when flattened.

“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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