Name: Orange Salad
Ingredients: 2 oranges; ¾ pound English walnuts, blanched; Lettuce; Mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Orange Salad

Ingredients

2 oranges
¾ pound English walnuts, blanched
Lettuce
Mayonnaise dressing

Directions

Peel and cut the oranges into small pieces.
Add the blanched walnuts to the oranges.
Serve the mixture on a bed of lettuce.
Drizzle with mayonnaise dressing.

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.

Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Orange + lettucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together373 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,058 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges: Provide juice and bright, sweet-tart flavor that balances the rich walnuts and dressing.
English walnuts: Add crunch and a rich, slightly bitter nutty flavor that contrasts with the juicy fruit.
Mayonnaise dressing: Adds creaminess, fat and moisture that coats the fruit and nuts.