Name: Orange Relish
Ingredients: 1 small orange; ½ cup mayonnaise; ½ cup whipped cream; parsley; sections of orange (freed from the membrane)

Why it works: Orange and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 680 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Orange Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the orange

Cut the orange in half and notch the edges to create a scalloped cup.
Place the orange cup in the center of individual serving plates.

Assemble and serve

Half fill the cup with mayonnaise and fold in the whipped cream.
Surround the cup with a border of parsley.
Arrange sections of orange around the parsley and place a tiny sprig of parsley between each section.
Serve very cold.

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 + parsleytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together680 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Orange + creamtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,170 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Cream + parsleytop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,392 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Orange: Forms the scalloped cup and adds fresh citrus acidity and aroma.
Mayonnaise: Provides a rich, fatty base that gives the filling its body.
Whipped cream: Adds air and lightness, softening the texture of the mayonnaise.