Name: Orange Salad
Ingredients: 4 oranges; 4 lettuce leaves; 2 teaspoons salt; ¼ teaspoon white pepper; 1 teaspoon grated onion; 3 teaspoons olive oil; 5 teaspoons vinegar

Why it works: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Orange Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Peel and slice the oranges, then divide them into pieces.
Arrange the orange pieces on the lettuce leaves.

Make and serve

In a bowl, mix the salt, white pepper, and grated onion.
Stir in the olive oil and vinegar until well blended.
Pour the dressing over the arranged oranges 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.

Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Orange + olivetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,456 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,562 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,779 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,297 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges: Provide the main body of the salad, with sweetness and juice that flavour the dish.
Olive oil: Adds fat and a smooth body to the dressing, carrying flavour across the leaves and fruit.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the sweetness of the oranges.
Grated onion: Adds a sharp, aromatic note to the dressing.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lettuce, onion, olive, vinegar):

Tarragonfits better
Garlicfits better
Thymefits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lettuce, onion, olive, vinegar. 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.