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Salad

Watermelon Salad

A chilled salad of watermelon, citrus, grapes, and lettuce topped with lemon mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,632 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chill the watermelon cubes until ice cold.

  2. Dust the watermelon cubes with coarse sea salt.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the watermelon with carpels of orange, grapefruit, and seeded, skinned Malaga grapes.

  2. Serve the mixture on a bed of lettuce or in halved grapefruit or orange shells.

  3. Top with lemon mayonnaise.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,632 recipes

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

  2. Orange + grapefruittop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together232 recipes

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

  3. Grapefruit + lettucetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Grapefruit + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Orange + grapetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,759 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

Watermelon
Provides the sweet, juicy base that makes up most of the salad.
Grapefruit
Adds tart acidity that balances the sweetness of the melon and grapes.
Orange carpels
Contribute sweetness and juiciness along with a bright citrus aroma.
Malaga grapes
Add sweet juiciness and a firm bite that contrasts the soft melon.
Lemon mayonnaise
Adds richness and fat, plus a tangy lemon note to the fruit.

Flavor stand-ins for the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, grapefruit, grape, lemon):

  1. Tomatoabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Carrotabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, grapefruit, grape, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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