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Salad

Orange Salad

A salad of thin-sliced sour oranges dressed with olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, salt, paprika, mustard, served on watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 293 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Orange Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the oranges into very thin slices and then cut the slices into quarters.

Marinate and serve

  1. Marinate the orange slices with a dressing made from olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, salt, paprika, and mustard.

  2. Serve the salad on a bed of watercress.

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. Mustard + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour oranges
Provide the main fruit body and bright, tart flavour that the dressing complements.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing, carrying flavour across the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sweetness of the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and helps season the orange slices.

The step that matters

Marinate the orange slices with the dressing. Salt and acid slowly draw flavour into the fruit, so the slices need time to absorb the dressing. Marinating too briefly leaves the salad tasting raw and sharp on top, while the dressing stays separate from the fruit.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, lemon, vinegar, mustard, watercress):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, lemon, vinegar, mustard, watercress. 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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