A vinaigrette ( ) is a culinary sauce made mixing vinegar and oil and usually seasoning it with salt, herbs, and spices. It is used most commonly as a salad dressing, but also as a marinade. Traditionally, a vinaigrette consists of 3 parts oil and 1 part vinegar mixed into a stable emulsion, but the term is also applied to mixtures with different proportions and to unstable emulsions which last only a short time before separating into layered oil and vinegar phases.