Most salads come with a dressing to match. But did you know that one order of ingredients is better than the other?
Whether it’s a zucchini salad, an avocado and tomato salad, a potato salad without mayo, or a cucumber salad with chickpeas, the most colorful and fancy salad is more than boring if it doesn’t get a suitable dressing. This could be, for example, a yogurt dressing for the pasta salad, a suitable one for the next Caesar Salad or the ultimate universal dressing that fits most salads. But would you have thought that the success of a salad dressing can depend on the order in which the ingredients are added? Incidentally, this also plays an important role in pancakes or when cooking potatoes.
Ingredients: The order makes the difference
If you put the oil in the bowl first for your dressing of choice, you won’t get salt, sugar or other seasonings to dissolve properly. Instead, there’s a good chance you’ll be uncomfortable biting down on grains of salt or the like.
Even a well-known 18th century gastronome and writer, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, was concerned about the correct order for dressings of all kinds. In the textbook of gastronomy and the pleasures of the table, he probably wrote the following sentence: “Five heads make a good salad: a miser who drizzles the vinegar, a prodigal who adds the oil, a wise man who gathers the herbs, a fool who jumbles them, an artist who serves the salad.”
What is the right order for a dressing?
From Brillat-Savarin’s mnemonic, the correct order of ingredients can be deduced. The spices and, if necessary, the herbs go into the bowl first, followed by the vinegar. You can then whisk the whole thing properly, so salt already dissolve. The oil should always follow at the end gen.
