Skip to main content
Salad

French Dressing

A simple salad dressing made with olive oil, vinegar or lemon juice, garlic, paprika, salt, pepper, and optional Worcestershire sauce, mint, chives or parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Garlic and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,149 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

French Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bowl

  1. Rub a bowl with the clove of garlic.

  2. Add a piece of ice.

  3. Put in salt and pepper.

Make the dressing

  1. Gradually add the olive oil while stirring.

  2. When the salt is dissolved, add vinegar or lemon juice.

  3. To vary, add Worcestershire sauce or a few drops of Kitchen Bouquet.

  4. For a fresh twist, add chopped mint, chives, or parsley.

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. Garlic + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Olive + chivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil
Forms the body of the dressing and carries flavor and richness.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma and flavor to the dressing.
Paprika
Adds mild color and a gentle, sweet pepper flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil gradually while stirring. Oil and vinegar are normally immiscible. Adding oil slowly while stirring breaks it into small droplets that stay suspended, giving a smoother, less separated dressing.

Swap the mint

The recipe marks mint as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, vinegar, clove, garlic, pepper, sauce, chive):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, vinegar, clove, garlic, pepper, sauce, chive. 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