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Salad

Tomatoes and Cucumbers

A chilled salad of tomatoes and cucumbers dressed with mayonnaise and served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomatoes and Cucumbers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Peel the tomatoes, remove the seeds and some pulp, and sprinkle the inside with coarse sea salt.

  2. Invert the tomatoes and let them stand in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the cucumbers into quarter‑inch dice and let them stand for at least 30 minutes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Just before serving, moisten the diced cucumbers with mayonnaise and fill the tomatoes with the mixture.

  2. Arrange the filled tomatoes in nests of lettuce leaves and garnish with additional mayonnaise and tiny heart leaves of 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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 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 juicy structure of the salad shell, with salt drawing out moisture.
Cucumbers
Add crisp texture and fresh moisture to the filling.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and creaminess that binds and moistens the cucumber filling.

The step that matters

Salting and draining the tomatoes. Salt draws water out of the tomato flesh through osmosis. Standing the tomatoes inverted lets excess juice drain, so the filling stays firm rather than diluted and soggy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, lettuce):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, 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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