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Salad

Chiffonade Dressing

A vinaigrette dressing with egg, chives, parsley, capers, beet, onion, salt, paprika, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chiffonade Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the white of the hard-cooked egg finely.

  2. Press the yolk through a sieve.

  3. Combine the chopped chives, parsley, capers, and cooked beet.

Make the dressing

  1. Add the scraped onion pulp, salt, and paprika.

  2. Mix in the oil and vinegar thoroughly.

Serve

  1. Serve on asparagus salad.

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. Chive + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chive + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 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

Egg yolk
Pressed smooth, the yolk emulsifies with the oil to give the dressing body.
Oil
Supplies the fat that carries flavor and gives the dressing its richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Capers
Contribute a sharp, salty bite that stands out against the oil.

The step that matters

Mix in the oil and vinegar thoroughly. Oil and vinegar separate unless fully blended. Thorough mixing, helped by the egg yolk, lets the oil disperse into fine droplets so the dressing stays smooth and cohesive rather than greasy and split.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, chive, parsley, capers, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, chive, parsley, capers, 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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