Name: California French Dressing
Ingredients: 4 tablespoons olive oil; ½ teaspoon powdered sugar; 2 tablespoons grapefruit juice; ½ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon paprika

Why it works: Olive and grapefruit work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 132 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

California French Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the ingredients in the order given.
Put the mixture in a glass jar.
Chill and shake thoroughly before using.
Serve with a fruit salad.

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.

Olive + grapefruittop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together132 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Sugar + grapefruittop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together309 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Olive + sugartop 35% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,483 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Olive and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,483 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

Olive oil: Provides fat and body, giving the dressing a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Grapefruit juice: Adds acidity and fresh citrus flavor that brightens the dressing.
Powdered sugar: Adds a little sweetness to balance the acidity of the juice.