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Salad

French Dressing

A vinaigrette made with vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, and sauce, tossed with chilled lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

French Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine vinegar, olive oil, coarse sea salt, white pepper, and sauce.

Prepare the lettuce

  1. Wash the lettuce leaves in very cold water and drain in a basket.

  2. Chill the drained lettuce on ice until serving.

  3. Tear the lettuce into pieces using a fork and spoon, and place it in a salad bowl just before serving.

Serve

  1. Do not let the dressed salad sit before serving.

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. Olive + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sauce + lettucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Vinegar + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 flavour, coating the leaves with richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the oil.
Lettuce
Provides the crisp leaves that the dressing coats and holds.

The step that matters

Dress the salad just before serving. Vinegar and salt draw water out of lettuce leaves, so dressing them early makes the greens limp and soggy. Adding dressing at the last moment keeps them crisp.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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