Name: French Dressing
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon salt; ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper; 1 teaspoon vinegar or lemon juice; 3 teaspoons oil

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 ↓

French Dressing

Ingredients

1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon vinegar or lemon juice
3 teaspoons oil

Directions

Combine salt, cayenne, vinegar or lemon juice, and oil in a bottle, then shake well to mix.

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: Provides fat and a smooth, rich mouthfeel that carries the other flavours.
Vinegar or lemon juice: Adds acidity that gives the dressing its sharp, bright taste.

“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.