Name: Roquefort Cheese— French Dressing
Ingredients: ½ cup olive oil; ⅓ cup vinegar; 1 teaspoon salt; 2 teaspoons sugar; 1 teaspoon white pepper; ½ pound Roquefort cheese, crumbled

Why it works: Olive and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,297 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Roquefort Cheese— French Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

In a bowl, combine olive oil, vinegar, salt, sugar, and white pepper.
Stir the mixture for 5 minutes.
Add the crumbled Roquefort cheese and mix well.

Serve

Pour over lettuce just 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.

Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,297 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Olive + roquefort cheesetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).
Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Vinegar + roquefort cheesetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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 base of the dressing and carries the flavor, giving it body and richness.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil and cheese.
Roquefort cheese: Provides the strong, salty, tangy flavor and creamy texture that defines the dressing.
Sugar: Adds a little sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar and cheese.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, vinegar, sugar, roquefort cheese):

Garlicfits better
Tarragonfits better
Cinnamonfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, vinegar, sugar, roquefort cheese. 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.