Name: Dressing Salad
Ingredients: ½ cup oil; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; vinegar to taste

Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Dressing Salad

Ingredients

½ cup oil
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
vinegar to taste

Directions

In a bowl, combine oil, salt, and pepper, then mix well to ensure the salt is evenly distributed.
Add vinegar to taste and stir again 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.

Pepper + vinegartop 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

Oil: Forms the body of the dressing and carries the flavor of the other ingredients.
Coarse sea salt: Seasons the dressing and enhances the flavor of the other ingredients.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.

“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.