Name: Salad Dressing
Ingredients: 3 tablespoons Blue Bird cat-sup sauce; 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce; 2 tablespoons Nokomis olive oil; Hiawatha salt to taste; pepper to taste; paprika to taste

Why it works: Olive and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,263 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Mix all ingredients thoroughly.
Serve very cold with any green salad, especially good with cucumbers.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,263 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Sauce + olivetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,568 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + peppertop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,303 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Blue bird cat-sup sauce: Provides the tomato-based sweetness and acidity that forms the dressing's base.
Worcestershire sauce: Adds savory depth and a sharp, tangy note to the dressing.
Nokomis olive oil: Supplies fat that gives the dressing body and carries flavour across the leaves.

“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.