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Boiled Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette made by cooking egg yolks, oil, butter, vinegar, lemon, salt, mustard, pepper, sugar, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Boiled Salad Dressing

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the yolks of 8 eggs until thick and lemon colored.

  2. Slowly add 3 tablespoons of olive oil while beating continually.

  3. Gradually mix in ½ cup melted butter, ½ cup vinegar, and the juice of 1 lemon.

  4. Cook in a double boiler until it coats the back of a spoon.

Season and serve

  1. Remove from heat and sift in 4 teaspoons salt, 1½ tablespoons mustard, ½ teaspoon white pepper, ½ teaspoon red pepper, and 3 tablespoons powdered sugar.

  2. Thin the dressing with whipped cream before serving.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, helping form a stable emulsion with the yolks.
Melted butter
Adds fat and smoothness, contributing to a creamy mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and balances the richness of the yolks and fats.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharp tang of vinegar and lemon.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps stabilize the emulsion.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler until it coats the back of a spoon. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated, but overheating scrambles them into lumps. Gentle, indirect heat from a double boiler lets the custard thicken smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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