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Salad

French Vinaigrette

A vinaigrette made with oil, French vinegar, coarse sea salt, mignonette pepper, tarragon, and optional garnishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

French Vinaigrette

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine 4 tablespoons of oil with ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt.

  2. Mix in ½ tablespoon of French vinegar gradually.

  3. Add ¼ teaspoon of mignonette pepper or ordinary pepper, mixing well.

Dress the salad

  1. Toss the salad lightly to coat the leaves evenly before adding vinegar.

  2. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of tarragon over the salad and toss again before serving.

Garnish and serve

  1. For garnish, add hard-boiled eggs, or a mixture of tarragon, chervil, and small spring onion if desired.

  2. Finish with nasturtium flowers and leaves just before serving.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Chervil + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 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

Oil
Forms the base of the dressing and carries the flavour of the other ingredients.
French vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the oil.
Tarragon
Adds a fresh, slightly anise-like aroma to the dressing and salad.

The step that matters

Mix in the vinegar gradually. Adding the vinegar slowly while mixing lets the oil and vinegar form a temporary emulsion, with tiny droplets of each dispersed through the other. Pouring it in all at once makes the dressing separate quickly and taste sharp in places and greasy in others.

Swap the tarragon

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

  1. Tarragonthe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Dillfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

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