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Salad

Mint Salad

A salad of orange pulp on lettuce, sprinkled with mint, dressed with sugar, lemon juice, or French 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 ↓

Mint Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the oranges and remove the white membrane.

  2. Arrange the orange pulp on lettuce leaves.

Dress and serve

  1. Sprinkle with minced mint and garnish with mint sprigs.

  2. Dress with sugar and lemon juice or a French 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.

  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. Lettuce + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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 flavour, sweetness and juicy texture of the salad.
Minced mint
Adds a cool, aromatic herbal note that contrasts with the sweet orange.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the oranges and sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and draws out a little juice from the oranges.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, mint, sugar, 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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