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French Salad Dressing

A simple vinaigrette made with olive oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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French Salad Dressing

Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

French Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix olive oil, pepper, and salt until well blended.

  2. Add vinegar and mix again.

Serve

  1. For added flavor, rub the salad dish with garlic or onion before adding the dressing.

  2. Serve with simple salads like lettuce, cucumbers, or string beans.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  5. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 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

Olive oil
Provides the fat base and carries the flavor of the other ingredients.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its sharp, bright taste.

The step that matters

Mix again after adding the vinegar. Oil and vinegar naturally separate. Mixing vigorously just before serving briefly blends them into a temporary emulsion, so the dressing coats the salad evenly rather than pooling as separate layers.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, pepper, vinegar, garlic, onion. 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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