Name: Whole Tomato Salad
Ingredients: medium-sized smooth tomatoes; salt; pepper; mayonnaise; parsley for garnish

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 34,122 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Whole Tomato Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the skin from the tomatoes and cut a thin slice from the stem end.
If there is a tough core, cut it out.
Use the handle of a small spoon to remove the seeds without breaking the outer wall.
Chill the tomatoes well.
At serving time, sprinkle the inside with salt and pepper.
Fill the tomatoes with mayonnaise and garnish with parsley.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together5,398 recipes

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

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

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, pepper):

Basilbetter flavor fit
Corianderbetter flavor fit
Oreganobetter flavor fit
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).