Skip to main content
Salad

South Carolina Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with vinegar, eggs, lemon juice, olive oil, mustard, salt, sugar, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

South Carolina Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Bring the vinegar to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, combine the beaten eggs, lemon juice, salt, sugar, and pepper. Mix in the olive oil and mustard.

  3. Quickly stir in the hot vinegar.

  4. Return the mixture to the heat for a moment until thickened.

Cool and serve

  1. Let it cool before serving on lettuce, celery, tomatoes, chicken, or potatoes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + olivetop 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. Pepper + mustardtop 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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they set with gentle heat, giving it body.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dressing's tang.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, emulsified into the sharp base for smoothness.
Prepared mustard
Helps emulsify the oil and adds a sharp, savory note.

The step that matters

Quickly stir in the hot vinegar. Adding hot vinegar to beaten eggs too slowly or without stirring can scramble them. Pouring it in steadily while stirring tempers the eggs gently, so the mixture thickens smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, lemon, sugar, pepper, olive. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes