Name: Orange Salad
Ingredients: 12 oranges; sugar; grated coconut; juice of 6 oranges; ⅓ cup wine or brandy

Why it works: Orange and coconut work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Orange Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

Peel the oranges and cut them into slices.
Remove all the seeds.

Assemble and serve

Layer the orange slices in a glass dish, sprinkling each layer with sugar and grated coconut.
Squeeze the juice of 6 oranges over the entire dish.
Pour ⅓ cup of wine or brandy over the salad.

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 + coconuttop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together584 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Orange + winetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,046 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + coconuttop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,742 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Coconut + winetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together159 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges: Provide the main fruit body, sweetness, and fresh citrus acidity and aroma.
Sugar: Sweetens the layers and draws out juice from the oranges as it sits.
Grated coconut: Adds a soft, textured contrast and a mild sweet, nutty flavour.
Wine or brandy: Adds aromatic depth and a gentle alcoholic note to the juicy fruit.