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Salad

Orange and Watercress Salad

A salad of orange segments on watercress, dressed with French dressing and garnished with English walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and walnut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 71 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Orange and Watercress Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Wash the oranges and remove the skins in quarter sections.

  2. Pare off the tough white skins with a sharp knife.

  3. Cut the orange sections from the membrane intact.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the orange sections on a bed of watercress, radiating from the center.

  2. Pour French dressing over the salad.

  3. Garnish with English walnuts.

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. Watercress + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together71 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Orange + watercresstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. 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 the main fresh, sweet-tart flavor and juicy texture of the salad.
Watercress
Adds a crisp, peppery base that contrasts with the sweet orange sections.
French dressing
Adds moisture and acidity that coats the leaves and oranges.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavor against the soft fruit.

The step that matters

Cut the orange sections from the membrane intact. Membrane left on the sections becomes tough and bitter when chewed. Cutting close to the membrane keeps the segments tender and clean-tasting.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (watercress, walnut):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against watercress, walnut. 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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