Skip to main content
Salad

French Dressing

A vinaigrette dressing made with olive oil, vinegar, mustard, paprika, salt, sugar, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

French Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Place a small funnel in the neck of a glass bottle with a ground‑glass stopper.

  2. Add the dry ingredients first, then the vinegar, and finally the olive oil.

  3. Remove the funnel, cork the bottle, and shake vigorously until the dressing thickens.

Store and serve

  1. Pour off the desired amount, recork the bottle, and store in a cold place.

  2. Shake well before each use.

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. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Olive oil
Supplies the fat and smooth body that makes up most of the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the rich oil.
Mustard
Its natural compounds help hold the oil and vinegar together as an emulsion.
Powdered sugar
Adds a little sweetness to soften the vinegar's sharpness.

The step that matters

Shake vigorously until the dressing thickens. Oil and vinegar naturally separate. Vigorous shaking breaks the oil into tiny droplets dispersed in the vinegar, and the mustard helps keep them suspended. Shaking too gently leaves the dressing split and oily.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, vinegar, sugar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Cucumberfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, vinegar, sugar, pepper. 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