Name: Salad Dressing
Ingredients: ½ cup olive oil; 5 tablespoons vinegar; ½ teaspoon powdered sugar; ½ small onion, finely chopped; 1 tablespoon parsley, finely chopped; 1 tablespoon green pepper, finely chopped; pinch of salt

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Combine all ingredients in a Mason jar.
Let the jar stand on ice.
Shake and mix well before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,649 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,779 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,297 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil: Forms the main body of the dressing and carries its flavour.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the oil.
Powdered sugar: Adds a little sweetness to offset the acidity of the vinegar.
Onion: Contributes sharp aroma and savoury bite.

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits better
Mustardfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, vinegar, sugar, parsley, pepper. 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.