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Salad

Orange Salad

A salad of orange sections served on lettuce with a dressing of salt, pepper, oil, tarragon vinegar, and onion juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Orange Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the oranges and remove the white skin.

  2. Separate the oranges into sections.

  3. Arrange the orange sections on a bed of lettuce.

Make the dressing

  1. To make the dressing, mix the salt, pepper, oil, tarragon vinegar, and onion juice in the order given, adding the oil slowly.

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. Lettuce + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Provide the main fresh, sweet and slightly acidic flavour and juicy texture of the salad.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp, cool bed that holds the orange sections.
Oil
Carries fat-soluble flavour and gives the dressing a smooth, rich body.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly to the dressing. Oil and vinegar are immiscible, so adding the oil gradually while mixing lets it disperse into tiny droplets, creating a stable, smooth emulsion instead of separated layers.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, pepper, tarragon, vinegar, onion):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, pepper, tarragon, vinegar, onion. 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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