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Dessert

Orange Mint

A chilled fruit salad of oranges and pineapple with mint, powdered sugar, lemon and pineapple juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Mint

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the skin and all the white from the oranges.

  2. Cut the oranges into ¼ inch slices, then into uniform cubes.

  3. Cut the pineapple into cubes of the same size.

Macerate and serve

  1. Sprinkle the fruit with powdered sugar.

  2. Add chopped mint, lemon juice, and pineapple juice.

  3. Chill thoroughly and serve in tall glasses.

  4. Garnish each glass with a sprig of mint.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Pineapple + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together182 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Orange + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Provide the main body and bright citrus flavour of the salad.
Pineapple
Adds sweet, juicy fruit that complements the citrus and holds its shape in cubes.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the fruit's juices to add sweetness and balance the acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and keeps the fruit tasting fresh.
Mint
Contributes a cool, aromatic herbal note.

The step that matters

Remove all the white pith from the oranges. Pith is bitter and fibrous, so leaving any of it on the oranges makes the salad taste harsh. Cutting away the skin and pith fully exposes the clean fruit segments.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, pineapple, sugar, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Peppermintfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, pineapple, sugar, lemon. 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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