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Dessert

Quick Oil Dressing

A quick dressing made with flour, mustard, olive oil, water, lemon juice or vinegar, egg yolks, sugar, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Quick Oil Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, mix flour and mustard to form a paste.

  2. Slowly add boiling water and lemon juice or vinegar, stirring constantly.

  3. Cook for 5 minutes while stirring.

  4. Pour the mixture into the well-beaten yolks of 2 eggs.

Finish the dressing

  1. When the mixture is cool (not cold), beat in 1 cup of olive oil rapidly.

  2. Season with sugar, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and cayenne pepper to taste, then mix thoroughly.

  3. Store in the refrigerator.

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

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

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

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

  3. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the mixture into a stable, smooth base as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and water mixture, giving the dressing a creamy body.
Olive oil
Provides fat and richness, forming the body of the dressing as it is beaten in.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps stabilize the emulsion.

The step that matters

Beat in the oil when the mixture is cool, not cold. Oil added to a mixture that is too hot can split or cook the egg yolks, while oil added when cold may not emulsify smoothly. Cooling to cool but not cold lets the yolks and oil bind into a stable, creamy emulsion.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, mustard, olive, egg, sugar, sauce, 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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