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Vinaigrette Sauce

A simple vinaigrette sauce made with finely chopped shallot, parsley, chervil, chives, salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 370 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vinaigrette Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the shallot, parsley, chervil, and chives very finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a sauce bowl, combine the chopped ingredients with salt, pepper, and vinegar.

  2. Stir well, then add the oil and mix again.

  3. Serve 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. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Shallot + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the richness of the oil.
Good oil
Forms the fat base of the emulsion, giving the sauce body and a smooth mouthfeel.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sharp onion flavour that cuts through the oil.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the sauce and draws out flavour from the chopped herbs.

The step that matters

Stir well, then add the oil and mix again.. Oil and vinegar separate quickly. Stirring the acid and seasonings first, then adding the oil and mixing again, helps the oil disperse into small droplets so the sauce looks more cohesive when served.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, chervil, chive, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, chervil, chive, pepper, 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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