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Salad

Orange-and-litchi-nut Salad

A salad of orange slices and crushed shelled nuts, dressed with oil and optional lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Orange-and-litchi-nut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the oranges and cut them into lengthwise slices.

  2. Crush the nut shells, remove the meats, and cut the nut meats in halves.

  3. Mix the nuts with oil, using 2 tablespoons for every 1 cup of nuts.

  4. Sprinkle the orange slices with oil.

Season and serve

  1. Add lemon juice if the oranges are sweet.

  2. Garnish with unpeeled orange slices and, if desired, with lettuce dressed with French dressing.

  3. Alternatively, omit the oil and lettuce, using a little sugar instead.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Nuts + lettucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Orange + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 body and juicy sweetness of the salad.
Nuts
Add crunch and richness that contrast with the soft, juicy orange slices.
Oil
Carries flavor and adds richness, coating the nuts and orange slices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the salad when the oranges are sweet.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, nuts, lettuce, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, nuts, lettuce, sugar. 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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