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Salad

French Dressing

A vinaigrette dressing made with salt, paprika, vinegar or lemon juice, oil, and optional mustard, onion juice, or tarragon vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

French Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine salt and paprika, then add vinegar or lemon juice and mix well.

  2. Slowly drizzle in the oil while stirring continuously.

  3. For added flavor, mix in tarragon vinegar, mustard, and onion juice if desired.

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. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + tarragontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Oil
Forms the body of the dressing and carries flavor as a fat.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Paprika
Adds color and a mild, sweet, earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Slowly drizzle in the oil while stirring. Adding oil gradually while stirring helps it disperse into the acidic liquid as small droplets, so the dressing stays smoother and less likely to separate.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, onion, tarragon):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Lettucefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, onion, tarragon. 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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