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Salad

Vinaigrette Dressing

A salad dressing made with salad oil, tarragon vinegar, salt, paprika, dry mustard, sweet pickles, onion or garlic, and walnut oil or Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Vinaigrette Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the salad oil and tarragon vinegar well.

  2. Add the salt, paprika, and dry mustard; mix thoroughly.

  3. Chop the sweet pickles and onion (or garlic) finely and add to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the walnut oil or Worcestershire sauce.

  5. Store in a cool place 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.

  1. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Tarragon + walnuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 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

Salad oil
Forms the fat base of the dressing and carries the other flavours.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the oil.
Dry mustard
Adds sharp pungency and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar.
Sweet pickles
Add sweetness and crunchy texture through the dressing.
Onion
Adds pungent aroma and savoury bite.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, vinegar, mustard, onion. 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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