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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy salad dressing made with beaten eggs, sugar, vinegar, butter, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine the beaten eggs, sugar, vinegar, cold water, butter, salt, and red pepper.

  2. Stir all ingredients together and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooled, add the sweet cream or creamy milk.

  2. Serve over your favorite salad.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 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
Thicken the dressing as they cook and set, giving it body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dressing's flavor.
Sweet cream or creamy milk
Adds richness and smooths the dressing after it has cooled.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Egg proteins must be heated enough to thicken the mixture, but if it boils too hard or too long the eggs can scramble and curdle. Stirring constantly helps keep the custard smooth.

“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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