Name: Green Corn and Chicory Salad, with Lime Juice and Oil
Ingredients: Fresh corn; Chicory; Lime juice; Oil; Mild fresh cheddar cheese; Nuts; Sliced bananas; Sliced oranges; Pine kernels

Why it works: Lime and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 937 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Green Corn and Chicory Salad, with Lime Juice and Oil

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the kernels from the fresh corn and chop the chicory.
In a bowl, combine corn and chicory.
Drizzle with lime juice and oil, then toss to coat.
Serve with mild fresh cheddar cheese or nuts.
For a fruit side, layer sliced bananas and oranges, then sprinkle with pine kernels.

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.

Lime + orangetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together937 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Corn + limetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together773 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lime + pinetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together37 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Chicory + pinetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8 recipes

Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).
Chicory + limetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, chicory, lime, cheddar cheese, banana, orange, pine):

Beansfits better
Almondfits better
Cashew nutfits better
Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, chicory, lime, cheddar cheese, banana, orange, pine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.