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Salad

Salad Dressing Without Oil

A creamy, thick salad dressing made from milk, egg yolks, butter, corn starch, vinegar, salt, and pepper, cooled to ice cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Salad Dressing Without Oil

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Moisten the corn starch with a little cold milk, then add it to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir continually until it forms a smooth, thick paste.

  4. Quickly stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Cook for one minute, then remove from heat.

Finish and cool

  1. Add the salt, pepper, butter, and vinegar.

  2. Let it cool until icy cold before using.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a creamy body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsifying power, helping the dressing hold together smoothly.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, thick paste when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silkier mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Quickly stir in the beaten egg yolks. Adding hot egg yolks too slowly or without constant stirring can scramble them into lumps. Stirring quickly and cooking only one minute keeps the yolks smooth while they thicken the mixture.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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