Name: Orange Salad
Ingredients: several oranges; 1 teaspoon sugar; 3 tablespoons olive oil; 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice; crisp lettuce leaves

Why it works: Olive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Orange Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Peel the oranges and remove the inside skin, keeping the pulp intact.

Make the dressing

In a bowl, combine sugar, olive oil, and vinegar or lemon juice in that order, mixing slowly.

Serve

Place some orange segments on a lettuce leaf, drizzle with dressing, and serve.

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.

Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,580 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Orange + olivetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,456 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,297 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Orange + lettucetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together373 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,370 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges: Provide the sweet, juicy segments that form the body of the salad.
Olive oil: Adds fat and richness, coating the orange segments and carrying flavour in the dressing.
Vinegar or lemon juice: Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the oranges and sugar.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the acid in the dressing.
Lettuce leaves: Provide a crisp base that holds the orange segments and dressing.