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Salad

Salad Dressing

A simple dressing made with salt, pepper, olive oil, vinegar, onion, and lettuce.

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

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 ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a salad bowl, combine the salt and pepper.

  2. Add enough olive oil to fill the spoon.

  3. Pour in the vinegar and mix well.

Serve

  1. Optionally, mix scraped onion with the lettuce leaves before serving.

  2. Dress the salad at the table with the prepared dressing.

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

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

  2. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil
Adds fat and body, carrying flavour and coating the lettuce leaves.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Pour in the vinegar and mix well. Oil and vinegar do not mix on their own. Thorough mixing breaks the vinegar into tiny droplets dispersed through the oil, so the dressing coats the leaves evenly instead of pooling at the bottom of the bowl.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, vinegar, onion, 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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