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Salad

Vinaigrette Sauce

A salad oil and vinegar dressing with capers, gherkins, shallots, herbs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vinaigrette Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine salad oil and vinegar.

  2. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Stir in chopped capers, gherkins, shallots or chives, tarragon, chervil, and parsley, then mix well until all ingredients are combined.

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. Capers + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Capers + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Shallot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Salad oil
Forms the main body of the sauce and carries the flavor of the herbs.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.
Capers
Add briny, sharp bursts of flavor that stand out against the oil and vinegar.
Gherkins
Contribute tangy, acidic crunch that brightens the sauce.
Shallots or chives
Add mild onion aroma and a fresh, sharp bite.

“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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