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Dessert

Orange Salad

A chilled orange salad tossed with powdered sugar and liqueurs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Orange Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Place the oranges on ice to cool and harden.

  2. Peel and slice the oranges into rounds.

  3. Remove the seeds from the slices.

Dress and serve

  1. Cover the orange slices with powdered sugar.

  2. Add the Maraschino, Cuaeva wine, and brandy.

  3. Let the salad stand on ice before serving.

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. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

  2. Orange + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

  3. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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 bulk of the salad, with juice and a fresh tartness that balances the sugar.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the orange juice as the salad stands, forming a light syrup that adds sweetness.
Maraschino liqueur
Adds sweetness and a cherry-almond aroma that carries through the orange.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic depth of flavour to the juices.

The step that matters

Let the salad stand on ice before serving. Standing lets the powdered sugar draw liquid from the oranges and dissolve into a syrup, so the flavours blend. Keeping it cold keeps the fruit firm and fresh.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Orangethe original

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