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Salad

Orange Salad

A salad of orange segments with a dressing of sugar, olive oil, and vinegar or lemon juice served on crisp lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Orange Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the oranges and remove the inside skin, keeping the pulp intact.

  2. In a bowl, mix the sugar, olive oil, and vinegar or lemon juice in the order given, adding the oil and vinegar slowly to create a smooth dressing.

Serve

  1. Place some orange segments on a crisp lettuce leaf, drizzle with the dressing, and serve.

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. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  2. Orange + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,456 recipes

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

  3. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil
Adds fat and body to the dressing, giving it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar or lemon juice.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Adding the oil and vinegar slowly. Oil and acid do not mix on their own. Adding them slowly while mixing breaks the oil into small droplets held in suspension, so the dressing stays smooth instead of separating.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, olive, vinegar, lettuce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, olive, vinegar, lettuce. 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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