Skip to main content
Salad

Italian Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette made with mustard, salt, pepper, sugar, onion juice, egg, vinegar, ketchup, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Italian Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly.

  2. Work in the vinegar, ketchup, onion juice, and egg, beating rapidly.

  3. Pour in the olive oil until it forms a syrup-like liquid.

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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + ketchuptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Lecithin in the yolk helps bind the oil and vinegar into a stable emulsion.
Olive oil
Forms the fat phase of the dressing, giving body and richness.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the oil.
Dry mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion and adds a sharp, pungent flavor.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of the vinegar with mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Pour in the olive oil until it forms a syrup-like liquid.. Oil must be added slowly while the egg and mustard are being beaten. Adding it too fast prevents droplets from being dispersed, so the emulsion breaks and the dressing separates.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, pepper, sugar, onion, egg, vinegar, ketchup):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, pepper, sugar, onion, egg, vinegar, ketchup. 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

Tomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes