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Salad

Salad Dressing Without Oil

A thickened, oil-free dressing made from milk, egg yolks, butter, cornstarch, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

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

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Moisten the cornstarch with a little cold milk, then add to the hot milk.

  3. Stir constantly until thickened.

  4. Add the beaten egg yolks and cook for one minute.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in salt, butter, pepper, and vinegar.

  6. Let it cool 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

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

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

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 and enrich the dressing, giving it a creamy body when cooked gently.
Cornstarch or flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the dressing a smooth, stable body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch and egg yolks thicken into a creamy dressing.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Cook the egg yolks for one minute after adding them. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but overheating can curdle them. Stir steadily while cooking so the yolks thicken the dressing smoothly without scrambling.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Sesamefits about as well

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