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Sauce

Vinaigrette Sauce

A vinaigrette sauce made with tarragon vinegar, olives, gherkins, capers, paprika, olive oil, sugar, salt, and pimento.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 379 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vinaigrette Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the olives, gherkins, capers, and pimento.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped ingredients with the vinegar, sugar, salt, and paprika. Mix well and serve with asparagus.

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. Tarragon + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tarragon + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Vinegar + olivetop 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

Tarragon vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the sauce and balances the sugar.
Sweet gherkins
Add crunch and a sweet-sour flavour that carries through the sauce.
Olives
Contribute salty, savoury depth and a firm chopped texture.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of the vinegar for a rounder, sweeter taste.
Paprika
Adds mild warmth and a red colour with a gentle aroma.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Capersthe original
  2. Basilfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Dillfits about as well

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