For dressing salads or vegetables we Italians have excellent extra-virgin olive oil, good wine vinegar and unparalleled, traditional balsamic vinegar at our disposal. These ingredients often seem sufficient for our needs and it's probably for this reason that we use a French word "vinaigrette" to classify other dressings.
Vinaigrette is a cold emulsion, usually based on oil and vinegar, salt and pepper, chopped onion and herbs. As with mayonnaise, which gives rise to a whole family of sauces based upon it, so other ingredients can be also added to a basic vinaigrette. For example, a "Norwegian sauce" has boiled egg yolks and anchovies added, and a ravigote sauce has gherkins and capers.
Mustard can be added, dried fruit and nuts, cheese or yoghurt, according to personal preference (imagination knows no bounds), but above all keep in mind the base dish and the combination of flavours that you want to create. Sometimes the vinegar is replaced with lemon juice or other citrus fruit juices: when this is the case the emulsion is referred to as a "citronnette". So what are "dressings" then? "Dressing" is the English term closest to the Italian "condimento", yet the English dressings are almost always very elaborate vinaigrettes, or mass-produced, prepared sauces.
A vinaigrette is easy to prepare and it has the advantage of ensuring uniformity across the dish. Always remember to dissolve the salt in the vinegar or lemon juice before beginning to emulsify the ingredients (something which could be done with a hand blender).
