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Salad

Salad Dressing for Potatoes or Fish

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with vinegar, eggs, flour, sugar, salt, pepper, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salad Dressing for Potatoes or Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Heat the vinegar until hot.

  2. Beat the eggs until light.

  3. Stir in the flour, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  4. Add this mixture to the hot vinegar and let it boil until it thickens like custard.

Serve

  1. Mix with potato or fish salad and refrigerate to cool.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the dressing.
Eggs
Their proteins set when heated, thickening the dressing into a custard-like texture.
Flour
Its starch thickens the liquid as it heats, giving body to the dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Add this mixture to the hot vinegar and let it boil until it thickens like custard.. Egg proteins thicken the dressing as they heat, but if the mixture overheats or boils too hard, the eggs can scramble and curdle. Stir steadily and stop once it coats a spoon.

“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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