Name: Orange and Lettuce Salad
Ingredients: 6 tart, juicy oranges; lettuce leaves; French dressing (with lemon juice instead of vinegar)

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 Lettuce Salad

Ingredients

6 tart, juicy oranges
lettuce leaves
French dressing (with lemon juice instead of vinegar)

Directions

Prepare

Peel and slice the oranges, removing the seeds.
Line a bowl with lettuce leaves.

Assemble and serve

Arrange the sliced oranges on the lettuce.
Dress with French dressing made with lemon juice.

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).
Lettuce + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,559 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Orange + lettucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together373 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lettuce + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,370 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Lemon + vinegartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,334 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges: Provide sweetness and juicy acidity that brightens the salad.
Lettuce leaves: Form a crisp, cool base that holds the orange slices.
French dressing: Adds moisture, fat and tang that coats the leaves and fruit.