I have never seen an orange salad on a menu or been served one at someone’s house. And now that I have tasted one, I’m outraged. Moroccan orange salad is one of the best salads in the world — sweet citrus juices countered with pungent onion and dueling kicks of spices and acidity.

Some cooks add olives and paprika, as Craig Claiborne did in The Times in 1980. He kept his accessible with a little garlic, cayenne, olive oil, vinegar and parsley. It grabs you, shakes you, then lets you enjoy the sweet fruit.

In Paula Wolfert’s “World of Food,” she seasons the orange slices with the spice mixture ras el hanout, orange-flower water, lime and lemon zest, dates and mint. Wolfert devotes an entire section to orange salads in her book “Couscous and Other Good Food From Morocco,” one with radishes and cinnamon, another with grated carrots and orange-flower water and one very much like Claiborne’s with olives and paprika. She even wrote, “Olives and oranges are one of those miracle combinations, like lamb and garlic, before which I sometimes feel I should bow in gratitude.”

I sent Claiborne’s recipe to Andrew Carmellini, the chef and an owner of Locanda Verde in Manhattan. Claiborne’s salad immediately reminded him of the citrus salads served along the Amalfi coast and on Sicily, where orange-and-lemon salad is commonplace. Cooks there also use oranges, wild oregano and green olives to make sauce Agrigento, an accompaniment to black bass or scallops.