Name: Orange Salad
Ingredients: 6 oranges; rind of 1 orange; juice of 1 lemon; 3 tablespoons salad oil; a pinch of cayenne pepper

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 Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

Grate the rind of one orange.
Squeeze the juice from one lemon.
Mix the lemon juice, grated orange rind, salad oil, and cayenne pepper together.

Assemble

Peel and slice the oranges into round slices.
Pour the mixture over the sliced oranges.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Orange + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,402 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges: Make up the body of the salad and provide its fresh, sweet flavor.
Salad oil: Adds fat and a smooth mouthfeel that carries the flavor of the dressing.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sweetness of the oranges.