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Cooked Salad Dressing

A thickened dressing made from egg yolks, butter, vinegar, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cooked Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Add the sugar, salt, mustard, pepper, and flour; mix well.

  3. Slowly add the sweet milk while stirring.

  4. Then add the hot vinegar and mix.

  5. Cook in a double boiler until thick like very thick cream.

  6. Remove from heat and stir in the butter until melted and combined.

  7. For a milder dressing, add ½ cup of thick cream.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing and add richness as they cook into a custard-like base.
Flour
Stabilizes the dressing so it thickens smoothly and holds its body without separating.
Sweet milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that the egg yolks and flour thicken.
Hot vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that balances the richness and sweetness of the dressing.
Butter
Adds fat and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished dressing.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler until thick like very thick cream. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated. Gentle, indirect heat from a double boiler lets the yolks and flour thicken the dressing evenly without lumps or separation.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, butter, egg, vinegar, milk, flour, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, butter, egg, vinegar, milk, flour, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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