Name: Highly-Seasoned Pink Salad Dressing
Ingredients: 10 drops Tabasco sauce; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon mustard; ¼ teaspoon paprika; 2 tablespoons chili sauce; 2 tablespoons finely chopped pimentos; 10 drops onion juice; ½ tablespoon cider vinegar; 1 tablespoon mayonnaise dressing

Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Highly-Seasoned Pink Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Mix Tabasco sauce, salt, mustard, paprika, chili sauce, pimentos, onion juice, and cider vinegar in a bowl until evenly blended. Add mayonnaise dressing and beat all ingredients together smoothly.

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.

Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + cidertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,414 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,120 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mayonnaise dressing: Provides the creamy base and body that the dressing is built on.
Chili sauce: Adds sweetness, tang and the reddish colour that gives the dressing its pink tint.
Pimentos: Add mild sweetness, colour and a soft texture to the dressing.
Cider vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the mayonnaise.

Swap the onion

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

Horseradishfits better
Shallotfits better
Radishfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, mustard, cider, vinegar. 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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Highly-Seasoned Pink Salad Dressing