Skip to main content
Main

Oranob Salad

A salad of sliced oranges sweetened with sugar and soaked in brandy, garnished with preserved citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Oranob Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Remove the outer rinds and the white inner skin from the oranges.

  2. Slice the oranges thinly and remove the seeds.

Macerate and serve

  1. Sprinkle plenty of white sugar over the oranges.

  2. Pour brandy over the oranges until well soaked.

  3. Serve when the sugar has dissolved.

  4. For garnish, add thin slices of preserved citron.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Brandy + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together561 recipes

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Fine china oranges
Provide the main fruit, with juice and segments that soften and absorb the sugar and spirit.
White sifted sugar
Dissolves in the orange juice to create a sweet syrup that coats the fruit.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, and soaks into the fruit for a boozy finish.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy, syrup):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, syrup. 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.

More orange salad recipes

Banana 4 See all 88 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes