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Salad

Fig and Orange Salad

A salad of lettuce topped with sliced figs, orange segments, and a lemon‑oil dressing.

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 ↓

Fig and Orange Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the heart leaves from the lettuce, wash, and dry them to form a bed.

  2. Peel the oranges, removing the skin, membrane, and seeds, and place the pulp on the lettuce.

  3. Slice the figs into narrow pieces and arrange them on top of the oranges.

Dress and serve

  1. Dissolve the salt in the lemon juice, add the oil, and mix thoroughly.

  2. Pour the dressing over the salad, gently turning the fruit to coat, and serve immediately.

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. Fig + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Fig + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked figs
Provide soft, sweet fruit texture and bulk in the salad.
Oranges
Add bright sweetness and juiciness that balances the dressing.
Lettuce
Forms a crisp, cool base that holds the fruit.
Oil
Adds fat and carries flavour, giving the dressing a smooth body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts the sweetness of the fruit.

The step that matters

Dress the salad just before serving. Acid in the lemon juice draws moisture from lettuce and cut fruit, so the leaves wilt and the fruit weeps if the salad sits dressed for long. Tossing gently keeps the pieces intact.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, orange, 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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