Name: Orange Salad
Ingredients: 4 acid oranges; sugar; 1 tablespoon sherry; 1 tablespoon yellow Chartreuse; 1 tablespoon lemon juice

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

Peel and slice the oranges very thin, cutting down the sides instead of across.
Sprinkle the sliced oranges sparingly with sugar.

Dress and chill

Mix the sherry, yellow Chartreuse, and lemon juice together and pour the mixture over the oranges.
Chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour before serving.

Serve

Serve before the game course.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together823 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,273 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Acid oranges: Provide the main fruit and tart flavor that the salad is built around.
Sugar: Sweetens the oranges and balances their acidity.
Sherry: Adds a mellow, wine-based depth of flavor to the dressing.
Yellow chartreuse: Contributes herbal, aromatic flavor to the liquid poured over the oranges.
Lemon juice: Adds extra acidity that brightens the dressing and sharpens the fruit.