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Salad

Plain French Dressing

A simple vinaigrette made with olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and optional onion juice or garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Plain French Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, stir together the salt and pepper with the olive oil.

  2. Add the vinegar and stir vigorously until the dressing thickens slightly.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, add onion juice or rub the bowl with garlic before serving.

  2. Serve the dressing with any green salad.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  5. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 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 flavour, giving richness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the oil.
Salt
Seasons the dressing and brings out the flavour of the other ingredients.

The step that matters

Stir the vinegar in vigorously. Oil and vinegar are immiscible, so vigorous stirring breaks the oil into tiny droplets dispersed in the vinegar. Without enough agitation the dressing stays separated and oily rather than emulsified and slightly thickened.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, olive, vinegar, clove, garlic):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, olive, vinegar, clove, garlic. 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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