Name: Nut Salad
Ingredients: crisp lettuce leaves; oranges, sliced; olives, sliced; ½ cup English walnuts or beech nuts, halved; ¼ cup imported olive oil; 2 teaspoons sugar; 2 tablespoons lemon juice; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper

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 ↓

Nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

Arrange crisp lettuce leaves on a serving platter.
Top with sliced oranges and olives.
Sprinkle halved walnuts or beech nuts over the salad.

Dress and serve

In a bowl, whisk together olive oil, sugar, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.
Drizzle the dressing over the salad before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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).
Lettuce + walnuttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together491 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Olive + walnuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,087 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil: Carries the flavour of the dressing and coats the leaves and fruit with fat.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sugar.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that offsets the acidity of the lemon juice.
Walnuts or beech nuts: Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavour to the salad.
Oranges: Add juicy sweetness and a bright citrus note.

Swap the walnut

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

Chickpeafits better
Almondfits about as well
Chestnutfits about as well
Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, orange, olive, sugar, lemon, pepper. 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.