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Salad

French Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette made with olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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French Salad Dressing

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

French Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the salt, red pepper, mustard, and sugar until smooth.

  2. Add the olive oil and lemon juice, stirring to combine.

  3. Finally, add the vinegar and mix well.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil
Provides fat and body, giving the dressing a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the oil.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the oil.
Mustard
Acts as an emulsifier that helps oil and acid hold together in the dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil and lemon juice. Oil and acid separate on their own. Stirring them in gradually with the dry ingredients and mustard helps the mixture hold together as a more stable emulsion rather than splitting into layers.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

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