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Orange Salad

A salad of sliced oranges seasoned with cloves, sugar, lemon juice, sherry, and orange flower water.

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 Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the oranges.

  2. Sprinkle with ½ teaspoon powdered cloves for every dozen oranges.

  3. Strew with sugar to taste.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the juice of ½ lemon, ⅓ cup sherry, and 1 teaspoon orange flower water.

  2. Pour the mixture over the salad.

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

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

  2. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Orange + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Clove + sherrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,237 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Form the main body of the salad and supply juice and fresh citrus flavour.
Sherry
Adds a fortified wine sweetness and depth to the dressing.
Sugar
Sweetens the oranges and draws out their juice, softening the flavour.
Powdered cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice that complements the citrus.

Swap the clove

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

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

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