Name: Apple and Orange Salad
Ingredients: 3 oranges; 2 apples; ½ cup rum

Why it works: Orange and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple and Orange Salad

Ingredients

3 oranges
2 apples
½ cup rum

Directions

Peel and shave the apples into very thin slices.
Mix the apple slices with the oranges.
Finish as directed for Orange Salad.

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.

Orange + appletop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,230 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Apple + rumtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together214 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together801 recipes

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