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Melon Salad

A chilled salad of melon and Spanish onions dressed with oil, vinegar, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Melon Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the melon into pieces and place in a deep dish.

  2. Add slices of Spanish onions between the melon pieces.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Cover with a plate and let it stand for 30 minutes.

  5. Remove the slices of onions.

Dress and serve

  1. Dress the salad with 2 parts salad oil, 1 part vinegar, and 1 part lemon juice.

  2. Dust with a little cayenne pepper and serve.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Melon + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Melon
Forms the main body of the salad and supplies its juicy, sweet base.
Spanish onions
Flavour aromatics that perfume the melon while it stands, then are removed.
Salad oil
Carries fat-soluble flavours and gives the dressing a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sweetness of the melon.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that balances the sweetness and lifts the flavour.

The step that matters

Let the melon stand covered for 30 minutes. Salt and pepper draw liquid out of the melon and the onions release aroma into it. Standing covered lets the seasonings and juices mingle, so the dressing is added to a well-seasoned, not watery, salad.

Swap the melon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, vinegar, lemon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Melonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, vinegar, 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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