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Vinaigrette, Sauce a LA

A simple vinaigrette sauce made with salad oil, vinegar, parsley, shallot, pepper, salt, and optional capers or gherkin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and capers 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 a LA

Ingredients

Directions

Make the vinaigrette

  1. In a bowl, mix salt and pepper with a little vinegar.

  2. Add salad oil and stir well.

  3. Incorporate chopped parsley and shallot (or onion or chives).

  4. For added flavor, mix in capers or finely chopped gherkin if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve with cold meats, fish, or vegetables.

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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Salad oil
Forms the body of the sauce and carries flavor and a smooth mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.
Shallot
Contributes sharp, aromatic onion flavor that cuts through the oil.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma and color to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the oil in well. Oil and vinegar are immiscible, so vigorous stirring breaks the oil into small droplets that stay suspended longer, giving a more even, cohesive dressing rather than separated layers.

Swap the capers

The recipe marks capers as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, parsley, shallot, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersthe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Dillfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, parsley, shallot, pepper. 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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