Skip to main content
Salad

Hygienic Salad Dressing

A cold salad dressing made with egg yolk, lemon juice, sugar, salt, and olive oil, finished with beaten egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Olive and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Hygienic Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ensure all ingredients are very cold.

  2. Separate the egg, placing the yolk in a large deep bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the yolk well, then add sugar, salt, and a little lemon juice.

  2. Slowly add the olive oil, a few drops at a time, alternating with lemon juice until all oil is used.

  3. Beat the egg white until stiff and mix it in.

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. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + olivetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 yolk
Its lecithin helps emulsify the oil and lemon juice into a stable dressing.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that gives the dressing body and carries flavour.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that cut through the richness of the oil.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the lemon juice for a rounder taste.
Egg white
Whipped until stiff, it adds air and a lighter texture to the dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil slowly. The yolk can only hold tiny oil droplets suspended in the liquid. Adding oil a few drops at a time lets the emulsion form. Pouring it in quickly can overwhelm the yolk, so the dressing separates and turns greasy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Pumpkinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes