your salad from turning soggy, you need to figure out a way
to protect the leaves from the oil. An oil-in-water emulsion,
where the oil is completely surrounded by vinegar
molecules, should provide just that kind of protection.
I dressed another batch of salad greens with a shaken
mixture of oil and vinegar and took an up-close-and-
personal look at the results. Here’s what I saw:
That’s right. Drops of vinegar suspended above the surface
of the leaves by larger drops of oil, like little blobs sitting in
beanbag chairs. Lifting these leaves caused a cascade of
vinegar to fall off the leaves, and examining the bottom of
the bowl confirmed my fears: the oil stuck to the leaves and
caused them to wilt, while the vinegar all sank to the
bottom. Clearly, I needed a surfactant to keep my oil and