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Orange Salad

A chilled salad of sliced oranges mixed with brandy, sugar, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,437 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Orange Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place 6 sugar knobs in a deep dish.

  2. Pour ¼ cup brandy over the sugar and ignite for 3 minutes. Extinguish the flame.

Assemble

  1. Peel and slice 12 oranges thinly.

  2. Add the orange slices to the brandy mixture.

  3. Sweeten with pounded sugar to taste.

  4. Break a little cinnamon into the dish and mix well.

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 + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Brandy + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Sugar knobs
Sweetens the brandy and dissolves to form a syrup when ignited.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, and is set alight to warm the sugar.
Oranges
Provide the main fruit, juice and fresh acidity to the salad.

The step that matters

Extinguish the flame. Brandy ignites easily, and leaving the flame burning too long can overheat and reduce the alcohol and aroma before the dish is served. Snuff it out once the sugar has been warmed.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, cinnamon. 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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