Akron White French Dressing Recipe

Last summer, for one night only, Akron, Ohio’s minor league baseball team, the RubberDucks, was renamed the Akron White French. It was a joke to the Akronites, one that most of the country would not understand. “French white is still pretty specific to Akron,” says chef Vinnie Cimino, who serves the creamy mayonnaise-based vinaigrette at his Cordelia restaurant in Cleveland.

Cimino lives in Akron, his hometown, and makes the forty-five-minute drive to the restaurant. This is further than white French people usually travel. “A lot of people from Akron come to Cleveland and they’re so excited to see white French on the menu,” he says. “I don’t know if anyone else in Cleveland has it.”

As an Ohio native originally from another part of the state, I had never had one until I ordered the signature “overdressed greens,” a pizzeria-inspired salad, at Cordelia’s last year. Curious, I called Cimino recently to find out more.

“It’s the best dressing there is,” Cimino told me. He shared the basics: mayonnaise, sugar (sometimes a lot), vinegar (usually white), onions, garlic, white pepper, and salt. Consider a tangy buttermilk dressing or ranch without herbs and with more sugar. He also suggested I talk to Ken Stewart, a former boss of his who owns three eponymous restaurants in Akron.

Stewart didn’t create this dressing, but he’s done as much as anyone to popularize it over the past thirty years. When I spoke to him on the phone, he gave me a brief history as he understood it.

According to Stewart and decades of newspaper archives, it all started with Stouffer’s, sort of. The long-closed Stouffer’s restaurant chain, founded in Cleveland and best known for the frozen foods it left behind, was the first to serve a version of white French dressing in Northeast Ohio. “It was fabulous,” Stewart says. “No one here had otherwise heard of the white French.”

But the recipe for Stouffer’s, which has been published numerous times, is not the Akron-style French white as we know it today. Like other mid-century French salad dressing recipes, this is a sweet vinaigrette stabilized with cornstarch. It is “white” because it does not contain tomatoes and is light in paprika.

When Stewart purchased Foley’s restaurant, which later became Ken Stewart’s, in 1990, it came with a recipe for a new type of French white, probably inspired by Stouffer’s, but with a mayonnaise base. “Harry Foley said, ‘Look, I have this fabulous salad dressing and I’m going to give you the recipe for it,'” Stewart said. “A lot of people have tried to replicate it since. They’ve come close, but no cigar. It’s a nice balance of sweet and sour. And there’s onion and a touch of garlic in it. There’s a touch of white pepper. There are a few other little ingredients that I’ve chosen not to disclose.”

While researching vinaigrette, I came across a four-year-old’s comment on a white French recipe from a “Mike Sicilain” who said he was a sous chef at Foley’s. He wrote that Foley’s chef Charles Schaeffer created today’s white French and that he, Sicilain, brought it to Papa Joe’s, another local institution known for his version, when he began working there in 1988. I couldn’t confirm this, but it fits Stewart’s story.

Regardless, looking at the media coverage, it seems that Akron’s appreciation for white French people really took off during the Ken Stewart era. In 2003, then Log-tag Food writer Jane Snow came up with a recipe copied from Ken Stewart, it was a favorite taste of the city, like sauerkraut balls. (Snow’s recipe became one of the most requested in the paper.) “People are crazy about this stuff,” Snow wrote.

Today, at Cordelia’s, the guests are going crazy again. Of course, Cimino’s white French isn’t just a simple copy and paste. The chef, a 2025 James Beard finalist and one of Gastronomy and wine Best New Chefs has his own take: “It starts with the best products available,” he says. “When they’re in season, we use candied onions, which are extra-sweet. Otherwise, we use the best sweet onions we can find. We use organic garlic from Hudson, Ohio. We use Duke’s mayonnaise, which has a little more vinegar sparkle. And we use homemade apple cider vinegar, not white. Ours also has a little Bertman Ball Park mustard,” a Cleveland classic.

With Cimino’s advice, I created my own version. Just like its inspiration, it has a tangy, sweet flavor supported by a fresh allium punch and warm notes of mustard and white pepper. (A lesson I learned while testing: don’t skip the night’s rest. These flavors need time to mellow.)

For Akronites, this is a versatile dressing. At Cordelia’s, it’s not just about the house salad, it’s also a base for coleslaw and other creamy deli “salads.” Cimino also recommends incorporating it into Japanese-style potato salad. Stewart says it’s also a utility player in his restaurants: “We have customers who use it as a sauce for steak.”