How much oil and how much vinegar make a vinaigrette

Appears in
Cooking One on One

By John Ash

Published 2004

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The traditional recipe for vinaigrette was 2 to 3 parts olive oil to one part wine or cider vinegar. This made for a pretty tart, acidic dressing that was nice on most salad greens and made a refreshing palate cleanser that, when consumed after the rich main course, as they traditionally did in France, also aided in digestion. Today, however, we don’t follow the traditional “order of courses.” Americans typically serve salad either before the main course or, as it often happens in my house, as the main course. A super-tart vinegary dressing may not be appealing at that point in the meal, and the traditional ratio of oil to vinegar may end up being too aggressively acidic. At the same time, there is pressure to lower the amount of fat in our diets, which often leads people to reduce the amount of oil in a dressing or to replace it with something utterly unsuitable. (Look at the ingredients list on a bottled low-fat salad dressing some time. The high-quality brands use water and various gum thickeners; the low-quality brands use much worse. Either way, it’s no way to dress a great salad.) I’m not going to be able to single-handedly change the country’s attitude toward fat, but let me try this: