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Salad

Aunt Susan's Salad Dressing

A salad dressing made with mustard, sugar, butter, salt, egg yolk, milk, and lemon juice or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Aunt Susan's Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a double boiler, beat together mustard, sugar, melted butter, salt, and egg yolk.

  2. Add milk and cook while stirring until the mixture thickens.

  3. Once thick, add lemon juice or vinegar to taste.

  4. Store in a bottle; sealing is not necessary.

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 + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + eggtop 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

Egg yolk
Thickens the dressing as it cooks and adds richness to the emulsion.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a creamy, pourable dressing.
Butter
Adds fat and smooth richness to the dressing.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Cooking the milk and egg yolk mixture until thick. Egg proteins set gently as they heat, thickening the dressing. Stirring over the double boiler's gentle heat keeps the eggs from scrambling into lumps.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, lemon. 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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