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Vinaigrette Sauce

A simple vinaigrette sauce made with salt, pepper, mustard, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Vinaigrette Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the salt, pepper, and mustard in a bowl.

  2. Very slowly add the vinegar while mixing thoroughly.

  3. Add the oil drop by drop, continuing to mix.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. White pepper + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. White pepper + mustardtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together618 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Supplies the sharp acidity that balances the richness of the oil.
Oil
Provides fat and smooth body, forming droplets suspended in the vinegar.
Mustard
Acts as an emulsifier, helping the oil and vinegar stay blended together.

The step that matters

Add the oil drop by drop, continuing to mix.. Oil only breaks into tiny droplets that stay suspended when it is added slowly while mixing. Adding it quickly lets the oil separate from the vinegar instead of forming a stable emulsion.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, 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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