Skip to main content
Salad

Cream Dressing for Salad

A creamy dressing made with vinegar, cream, mustard, salt, sugar, eggs, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream Dressing for Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Scald the vinegar and the cream separately, then let each cool.

  2. Beat the eggs until very stiff.

Make the dressing

  1. Add the cooled vinegar to the beaten eggs, then combine with the cream mixture.

  2. Cook over low heat until thickened like custard.

  3. Once cooled, stir in the juice of one lemon.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Set and thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a custard-like body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture that softens the acidity.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dressing's tang.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and aroma and helps balance the richness of the cream and eggs.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat until thickened like custard. Egg proteins begin to set around moderate heat, so high heat or long cooking can curdle the eggs and leave the dressing grainy. Gentle heat and constant stirring let it thicken smoothly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, cream, mustard, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Raspberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, cream, mustard, sugar, 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.

More cream salad dressing recipes

Sour 17Whipped 5 See all 68 →

You might also like

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