Salads

Appears in

Published 1974

About

FRENCH DRESSING IS VINAIGRETTE SAUCE. As I understand it, it is made of salt, freshly ground pepper, good red-wine vinegar, and first cold-pressing olive oil. It is so easy to make that to prepare a quantity in advance to be stored is risibly impractical. Its commonest faults are: An excess of vinegar; poor oil; poor vinegar.

The flavor of good olive oil is rich, clean, clear, and fruity. There should be no muddy, acid aftertaste. It belongs to the realm of voluptuous experience. Good olive oil (that commercialized in France as “Extra-Vièrge”) contains less than 1 percent oleic acid. The oil has been extracted from healthy, ripe olives by purely mechanical means with no application of heat or intervention of chemicals.