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Salad

Salad Dressing, with Oil

A simple salad dressing made with oil, vinegar, pepper, salt, and optional cayenne, sugar, or mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salad Dressing, with Oil

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mix black pepper and coarse sea salt in 2 tablespoons of oil.

  2. Stir in 4 more tablespoons of oil and 5 tablespoons of vinegar.

  3. Add cayenne pepper and sugar or mustard if desired.

Serve

  1. Prepare your desired salad and pour the dressing over it 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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Oil
Forms the body of the dressing and carries the flavour of the seasonings.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the oil and balances its richness.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the dressing and draws out flavour from the pepper.

The step that matters

Pour the dressing just before serving. Oil and vinegar separate quickly when standing, and acid softens leaves if they sit in dressing too long. Dressing shortly before serving keeps the greens crisp and the mixture evenly distributed.

“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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