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Salad

Chiffonade Dressing

A vinaigrette dressing with egg, chives, parsley, capers, beet, onion, salt, paprika, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Chive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chiffonade Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the white of the hard-cooked egg finely.

  2. Press the yolk through a sieve.

Make the dressing

  1. Add the chopped chives, parsley, capers, and cooked beet.

  2. Mix in the scraped onion pulp, coarse sea salt, and paprika.

  3. Stir in the oil and vinegar until thoroughly combined.

Serve

  1. Serve on asparagus salad.

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. Chive + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chive + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Oil
Forms the body of the dressing and carries flavor, giving it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil and yolk.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binder that helps the oil and vinegar emulsify into a creamy dressing.
Capers
Contribute a briny, sharp acidity that adds punch to the dressing.

The step that matters

Stir in the oil and vinegar until thoroughly combined. Oil and vinegar separate unless they are fully mixed; the yolk helps form a stable emulsion, so the dressing stays smooth rather than breaking into layers.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, chive, parsley, capers, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Welsh onionfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, chive, parsley, capers, 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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