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Salad Dressing, Which Will Keep a Longtime

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with vinegar, water, mustard, celery seed, butter, salt, egg yolks, and sugar, preserved in a jar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Salad Dressing, Which Will Keep a Longtime

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Boil the vinegar and water together.

  2. Stir the hot mixture into the egg yolks and beat well.

  3. Add the butter, sugar, salt, mustard, and celery seed, and mix thoroughly.

Store and serve

  1. Store in a sealed jar for use, especially good for potato salad.

  2. For potato salad, add ½ cucumber, finely chopped.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + celerytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,627 recipes

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

  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 yolks
Thicken the dressing and bind it into a creamy emulsion.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its sharp, tangy flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow mouthfeel to the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the acidity with sweetness.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Stirring the hot mixture into the egg yolks. Adding hot liquid too fast can scramble the egg yolks. Pour slowly while beating constantly so the yolks warm gradually and thicken smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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

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