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Oil Dressing

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with oil, egg yolk, lemon juice, mustard, cayenne pepper, salt, mashed apples, raisins or pecans, honey, cinnamon, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Oil Dressing

Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Oil Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a cold dish, beat the oil.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolk and mix until creamed.

  3. Incorporate the lemon juice, mustard, cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  4. Mash the apples and grind the raisins or pecans, then mix until smooth.

  5. Sweeten with honey and add cinnamon just before serving.

  6. If desired, thin the dressing with rich cream.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Mustard + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Oil
Forms the body of the dressing as the base that the other ingredients are beaten into.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil with the acid so the dressing stays creamy instead of separating.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and helps stabilise the emulsion.
Apples
Add moisture and natural sweetness, giving the dressing body and smoothness.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolk to the oil gradually while beating. Adding the oil and yolk slowly while beating lets tiny oil droplets disperse and be coated by the yolk's lecithin. Adding too much oil at once can break the emulsion, leaving a greasy, separated dressing.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, lemon, mustard, pepper, apple, honey, cinnamon):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, mustard, pepper, apple, honey, cinnamon. 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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