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Salad

French Dressing

A vinaigrette dressing made with olive oil, mustard, lemon juice or vinegar, salt, sugar, cayenne pepper, and grated onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

French Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a cup, combine mustard, salt, sugar, and pepper.

  2. Dissolve in lemon juice or vinegar.

  3. Beat the dissolved mixture into the olive oil.

  4. Add the grated onion.

Store

  1. Keep on ice or in a cool place until ready to use.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil
Forms the bulk of the dressing and carries the fat-soluble flavours.
Mustard
Helps the oil and acid hold together as a smooth, stable emulsion.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the rich oil.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that softens the sharpness of the acid.

The step that matters

Beating the dissolved mixture into the oil. Adding the acidic mixture to the oil while beating breaks the oil into tiny droplets suspended in the liquid. Mustard helps these droplets stay dispersed, so the dressing stays smooth rather than separating into layers.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Broccolifits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, lemon, mustard, pepper, sugar. 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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