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Orange and Date Salad

A fruit salad of oranges, grapefruit, dates, figs, apples, pecan nuts, served on lettuce with an egg yolk dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Grapefruit and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Orange and Date Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the pulp and inner skins from the oranges and grapefruit, breaking the flesh into small pieces.

  2. Mix the orange and grapefruit flesh with the chopped dates, figs, apples, and pecan nuts.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, beat the egg yolks until light, then add the powdered sugar, orange juice, and a dash each of lemon and grape juice.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on blanched lettuce leaves in orange shells.

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. Grapefruit + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together118 recipes

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

  2. Orange + grapefruittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 recipes

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

  3. Dates + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Fig + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together238 recipes

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

  5. Orange + figtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the dressing, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Dates
Add natural sweetness and a chewy texture to the salad.
Apples
Add crisp texture and a mild tart freshness to the mixture.
Pecan nuts
Add crunch and a toasty, buttery flavour.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dressing and dissolves smoothly into the liquid.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, grapefruit, dates, fig, apple, lettuce, egg):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, grapefruit, dates, fig, apple, lettuce, egg. 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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