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Roquefort Cheese Dressing

A creamy dressing made from Roquefort cheese, olive oil, vinegar, pepper, salt, paprika, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Roquefort Cheese Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Use a fork to break the Roquefort cheese into fine pieces in a soup plate.

  2. Stir in the olive oil constantly until smooth.

  3. Add the black pepper, coarse sea salt, and paprika while stirring. Mix in the vinegar.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the lettuce and mix well.

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. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Roquefort cheese
Provides the main savory, tangy flavor and body of the dressing.
Olive oil
Forms the smooth, emulsified base that carries the flavors and coats the lettuce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cheese and oil.

The step that matters

Stir in the olive oil constantly until smooth. Adding oil while stirring breaks the cheese into a fine, evenly dispersed mixture. Adding it too fast or without stirring can leave lumps of cheese and a greasy, separated texture.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roquefort cheese, olive, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against roquefort cheese, olive, pepper, vinegar. 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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