Skip to main content
Salad

French Dressing

A simple vinaigrette made with olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and optional catsup and sugar.

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

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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

  1. Mix the salt and red pepper with the olive oil.

  2. Slowly add the vinegar while stirring constantly.

  3. Add lemon juice, catsup, and sugar if desired.

  4. Ensure all ingredients are cold 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.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  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. Vinegar + peppertop 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

Olive oil
Supplies the fat that gives the dressing body and carries its flavour.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the oil.
Lemon juice
Adds further acidity and brightness.

The step that matters

Adding the vinegar slowly while stirring constantly. Oil and vinegar do not mix naturally. Adding vinegar slowly while stirring constantly breaks it into tiny droplets dispersed through the oil, forming a temporary emulsion that stops the dressing separating into layers.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, vinegar, 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes