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Salad

French Dressing

A simple vinaigrette made with oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and optional paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

French Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the salt and pepper with the oil.

  2. Slowly stir in the vinegar until the mixture becomes white and slightly thickened.

  3. Adjust the oil to taste, ensuring the dressing does not taste overly of oil or vinegar.

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 + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Oil
Forms the rich body of the dressing and carries flavour, and it is the base that the vinegar is stirred into.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that cuts the richness of the oil and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Slowly stir in the vinegar. Adding vinegar slowly while stirring breaks the oil into tiny droplets dispersed in the acid. This gives the whitened, slightly thickened texture. Pouring it in quickly lets the oil and vinegar separate instead of blending.

“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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