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Salad

French Dressing

A simple vinaigrette made with olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, optional mustard, and optional hard‑boiled egg yolk.

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

Make the dressing

  1. Combine the olive oil with salt and pepper, using twice as much salt as pepper.

  2. Add a little mustard if desired.

  3. Slowly beat in the vinegar until the mixture is creamy.

Variation and serving

  1. For a variation, rub the yolk of a hard-boiled egg with salt and pepper, then add vinegar and oil as in a mayonnaise dressing.

  2. Serve with artichokes, endive, lettuce, cress, cucumbers, or celery.

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 its flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the oil and balances its richness.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Optional emulsifier that helps the oil and vinegar bind into a creamy mixture.

The step that matters

Slowly beat in the vinegar. Adding vinegar gradually while beating lets the oil and acid form a stable emulsion. Pouring it in all at once can make the dressing separate instead of turning creamy.

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.

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