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Salad

Garlic Dressing

A dressing made from mashed garlic, paprika, sea salt, malt vinegar, water, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,368 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Garlic Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the garlic cloves in a small bowl to extract the juice, discarding the pulp.

  2. Add paprika, coarse sea salt, malt vinegar, and water to the garlic juice and mix well.

  3. Stir in the oil until combined.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over your 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. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Garlic + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Malt + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together365 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Garlic + malttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together140 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Garlic
Provides the main pungent aroma and flavor, with its juice carrying most of the taste.
Malt vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.
Oil
Adds fat and body, giving the dressing a smooth, coating texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the oil until combined. Oil and vinegar-based liquids naturally separate, so the oil must be stirred in thoroughly to form a more stable, evenly flavored emulsion rather than sitting in layers.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, malt, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Corianderfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, malt, 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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