Why it works: Lettuce and orange work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 373 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓
Orange Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Prepare the lettuce and place it in nests in a salad dish.
Peel and slice the oranges very thin.
Assemble and serve
Arrange the orange slices on the lettuce and top with mayonnaise dressing.
Do not prepare this until just before serving.
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.
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Lettuce + orangetop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together373 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lettuce
- Forms the crisp base that holds the orange slices and dressing.
- Navel oranges
- Provide sweetness and acidity that contrast with the rich dressing.
- Mayonnaise dressing
- Adds fat and creaminess that coats the oranges and lettuce.
The step that matters
Assemble just before serving. Dressing and acidic orange juice soften lettuce over time, so the salad loses crispness if assembled early. Holding the components apart until the last moment keeps the leaves crisp and the dressing fresh.
“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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