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Salad

Boiled Salad Dressing

A custard-like dressing made by boiling vinegar and butter, then combining with eggs, sugar, mustard, salt, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Boiled Salad Dressing

Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, mustard, salt, and red pepper with the eggs until smooth.

  2. Boil the vinegar with the butter in a saucepan.

  3. Pour the hot vinegar mixture over the egg mixture, stirring well.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook gently, stirring, until it thickens like custard.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set and thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a custard-like body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps the dressing taste balanced.

The step that matters

Cook gently and keep stirring until it thickens. Egg proteins set at moderate heat and can curdle if the mixture overheats. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the custard smooth and lets it thicken evenly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, vinegar, egg, butter. 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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