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Dessert

Parisian Salad Dressing

A dressing made with hard‑boiled egg yolks, raw egg yolks, salad oil, vinegar, herbs, and cream or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Parisian Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Keep the whites of the hard-boiled eggs aside.

  2. Break the raw eggs and separate the yolks from the whites.

  3. Drop the whites into boiling water to harden.

  4. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs in a bowl.

  5. Add the raw yolks to the mashed yolks to moisten.

  6. Season with salt, white pepper, and cayenne.

  7. Stir in the salad oil and vinegar drop by drop.

  8. Add the chopped onions, chervil, and chives.

  9. Mix until smooth.

  10. Add cream or melted butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Chop the hardened egg whites finely.

  2. Add the chopped whites to the dressing.

  3. Use the dressing as needed.

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 + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Tarragon + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + cherviltop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar, giving the dressing a thick, smooth body.
Salad oil
Provides the fat that forms the body of the dressing when blended into the yolks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Cream or melted butter
Adds richness and a silkier texture to the finished dressing.

The step that matters

Stir in the oil and vinegar drop by drop. Adding oil slowly lets the egg yolk emulsify it into the vinegar. Adding it too fast can split the dressing into separate layers of oil and liquid.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, tarragon, onion, chervil, chive, cream):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, tarragon, onion, chervil, chive, cream. 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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