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Dessert

Orange Mint Relish

A chilled relish of orange and pineapple cubes tossed with mint, powdered sugar, lemon juice, and sherry wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 Mint Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the skin and white pith from the oranges.

  2. Cut the oranges into ¼ inch slices, then into uniform cubes.

  3. Add an equal amount of canned pineapple cut into wedges.

Season and serve

  1. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, chopped mint, lemon juice, and sherry wine.

  2. Chill thoroughly and serve in tall champagne glasses, garnished with a sprig of mint.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Mint + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Orange + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Pineapple + sherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Pineapple + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together182 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Provide the main fresh fruit base and bright citrus flavor.
Canned pineapple
Adds sweet, juicy fruit that bulks out the relish and adds moisture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the relish and dissolves quickly into the fruit juices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances sweetness and brightens the fruit flavors.
Sherry wine
Adds a fortified, aromatic depth that complements the citrus and fruit.

The step that matters

Chill thoroughly. Chilling lets the sugar, juices, and wine blend with the fruit and firm the flavors. Serving it warm or too soon leaves the sweetness and mint tasting separate and the texture loose.

Swap the mint

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, pineapple, sugar, lemon, sherry, wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, pineapple, sugar, lemon, sherry, wine. 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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