Skip to main content
Salad

Honey Salad Dressing

A simple dressing made with olive oil, honey, lemon juice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Olive and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Honey Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, beat together the olive oil, honey, lemon juice, and salt until well combined.

  2. Use the dressing immediately.

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. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Olive + honeytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,792 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Honey + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,707 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil
Adds fat and a smooth body that carries the other flavours through the dressing.
Honey
Provides sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts through the richness of the oil.

The step that matters

Beat until well combined. Oil and lemon juice naturally separate, so thorough beating creates a temporary emulsion. Without it, the dressing will look split and taste unevenly seasoned.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, honey):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Grapefits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, honey. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes