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Orange Salad

A salad of sliced oranges sweetened with sugar and soaked in brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and pear work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 323 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Orange Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Remove the outer rinds and the white inner skin from the oranges.

  2. Slice the oranges thinly and remove the seeds.

Macerate and serve

  1. Sprinkle plenty of white sugar over the oranges.

  2. Pour a glass or more of brandy over the oranges.

  3. Serve when the sugar is dissolved.

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 + peartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Brandy + peartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Sugar + peartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

China oranges
Provide the main fruit, with juice and flesh that soften and sweeten once macerated.
White sifted sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out its juice, which dissolves the sugar into a syrup.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warming alcoholic flavour that complements the citrus.

Swap the pear

The recipe marks pear as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, sugar, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Pearthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, 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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