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Vinaigrette Sauce

A simple vinaigrette made with parsley, chives, shallot, vinegar, olive oil, salt, and Tabasco.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Vinaigrette Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine chopped parsley, chives, and shallot.

  2. Add vinegar and olive oil, then mix well.

  3. Season with salt and Tabasco sauce to taste.

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. Chive + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  5. Chive + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.
Olive oil
Provides fat and body, emulsifying with the vinegar to give a smooth, coating texture.
Shallot
Contributes a mild, sharp onion flavour that stays fresh when finely chopped and raw.

The step that matters

Add vinegar and olive oil, then mix well. Vinegar and oil do not mix on their own. Vigorous mixing breaks the oil into tiny droplets suspended in the vinegar, so the dressing stays combined and coats the herbs evenly instead of separating into layers.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chive, shallot, vinegar, olive, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chive, shallot, vinegar, olive, sauce. 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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