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Dessert

Orange Salad

A chilled orange pulp salad dressed with powdered sugar, mint, lemon, sherry, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Salad

serves 6

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the pulp from the oranges.

  2. Chill the pulp thoroughly.

Make and assemble

  1. In a bowl, mix the powdered sugar, chopped mint leaves, lemon juice, and Sherry wine.

  2. Divide the orange pulp into six champagne glasses.

  3. Pour the dressing over the oranges.

  4. Add a one-inch cube of currant jelly to each glass.

  5. Garnish with a small sprig of fresh 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 + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together549 recipes

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

  4. Sherry + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Provide the main fruit body, juicy texture, and bright citrus flavor.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dressing and dissolves easily into the citrus juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the dressing.
Sherry wine
Contributes nutty, aromatic depth to the dressing.
Currant jelly
Adds concentrated sweetness and fruity flavor as it melts slightly against the oranges.

The step that matters

Chill the pulp thoroughly. Cold fruit stays firm and refreshing, and chilling keeps the orange segments from becoming watery once the dressing is added. Cold also keeps the flavors crisp rather than flat.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, mint, lemon, sherry, wine. 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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