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Sauce

Boiled Dressing

A thickened sauce made from butter, flour, sugar, salt, mustard, cayenne pepper, milk, vinegar, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Boiled Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan until hot.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the milk and vinegar, stirring continuously.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then slowly add them to the mixture, stirring constantly.

  5. Cook until the dressing thickens, then remove from heat.

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 + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Thickens the butter and liquids into a smooth base that sets as it cooks.
Eggs
Set when gently heated, thickening the dressing and giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour into the base of the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the eggs and butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the dressing, which thickens with the flour and eggs.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. Beaten eggs must be added slowly while stirring constantly. Stirring in hot mixture gently tempers them, so they thicken smoothly rather than scrambling into lumps.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

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