Dressings and Sauces

Traditional balsamic from Modena has to age at least 12 years before it can carry the protected name. A pint of house vinaigrette for $8.95 is a different product, and that's fine.

The published figures, 80 calories and 8 grams of fat a serving with 75 mg of sodium, give it the least salt of the five dressings that have data.

Gluten, wheat and soy are listed. None of those belong in a basic oil-and-vinegar dressing. Ask what's in it if you're coeliac.

$12.95, the most expensive of the eight pints. It's the dressing that comes with the Buffalo Wings.

The blue veins come from Penicillium roqueforti, a mould that cheesemakers add to the milk and then feed with air by piercing the wheels with needles, so the mould can grow along the channels.

Milk, eggs and fish are listed. The menu doesn't say where the fish comes from. 60 calories and 5 grams of fat a serving, with the serving size unstated.

Caesar Cardini is credited with inventing the salad in Tijuana in 1924, without anchovies, since the Worcestershire sauce in his dressing, itself made from anchovies, supplied that flavour.

Either way, fish sits on this dressing's allergen list, next to milk and eggs. A pint costs $10.50.

The published 80 calories, 7 grams of fat and 90 mg of sodium describe a single serving, not the pint. The figures we have don't state how big that serving is. A pint holds 32 tablespoons.

$8.25, the cheapest of the eight pints.

Ranch takes its name from Hidden Valley Ranch, the California guest ranch where Steve Henson served his buttermilk dressing in the 1950s, and it has since become the best-selling salad dressing in the United States.

Milk and eggs are the allergens. Unlike the Caesar and the Blue Cheese, it lists no fish. The published 70 calories and 7 grams of fat are per serving, and no serving size comes with them.

This is the dressing from the Santa Fe Salad, and the restaurant's own published recipe for that salad builds it by blending a Southwestern dressing with spicy peanut sauce.

No nutrition or allergen figures are published for the pint. The Santa Fe Salad itself lists peanuts and milk. Assume both until the restaurant tells you otherwise.

$11.50. Use it on grilled chicken as well as greens.

60 calories and 4 grams of fat a serving, the least fat of the five dressings with published figures. It's also the saltiest of them, at 180 mg.

Peanuts, gluten, wheat and soy are all listed, and soy sauce is the likeliest reason a vinaigrette picks up both gluten and extra sodium, since traditionally brewed soy sauce is made with wheat as well as soybeans.

$9 a pint. 4 grams of carbohydrate, the most of the five. Keep it away from anyone with a peanut allergy.

Nothing is published for it. No calories, no allergens.

The tamarind sauce served with the Avocado Eggrolls and the Thai Lettuce Wraps is a tamarind-cashew sauce, with nuts in it. The listing for this pint doesn't say whether it's the same recipe. Ask before you buy it for anyone with a tree nut allergy.

Tamarind is the sour-sweet pulp of a pod that grows on a tropical tree, and it's the same ingredient that gives Worcestershire sauce its tang, and at $12.25 this pint is second only to the Blue Cheese in price among the eight on offer.

Peanut sauce is one of the three dips that come with the Thai Lettuce Wraps, alongside sweet red chilli and tamarind-cashew, and this pint lets you take it home for $9.95.

No nutrition or allergen figures are published for it. Peanuts are in the name, so treat it as a peanut product.

Peanut sauce in Thai cooking goes back to satay. It thins with a splash of warm water. Try it on cold noodles.