Skip to main content
Salad

French Dressing

A simple salad dressing made with olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, optional mustard, and optional egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

French Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine olive oil with salt and pepper in a bowl, using twice as much salt as pepper.

  2. Add a little mustard if desired.

  3. Slowly beat in the vinegar until the mixture reaches a creamy consistency.

  4. Adjust the amount of vinegar based on the salad being served.

  5. For a richer dressing, rub the yolk of a hard-boiled egg with salt and pepper, then mix in vinegar and oil.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 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
Forms the body of the dressing and carries the flavour of the other ingredients.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the oil and balances its richness.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Optional; its fats and emulsifiers help bind the oil and vinegar into a creamier dressing.

The step that matters

Slowly beat in the vinegar. Oil and vinegar are immiscible, so adding vinegar slowly while beating breaks the oil into tiny droplets that stay suspended. Adding it all at once can make the dressing separate.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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