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Cooked Salad Dressing

A cooked salad dressing made with egg yolks, flour, vinegar, mustard, butter, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cooked Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the dry ingredients with the egg yolks and beat until light.

  2. Add the melted fat, cold milk, and hot vinegar.

  3. Cook in a double boiler until the mixture coats the spoon.

  4. If the mixture curdles, place the boiler in a pan of cold water and beat until smooth.

  5. You can use one whole egg instead of two yolks.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they set and bind it into a smooth emulsion.
Flour
Stabilises the mixture so it thickens without curdling during cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its sharp, tangy flavour.
Milk
Dilutes the egg and flour mixture, adding moisture and softness.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler until the mixture coats the spoon. Egg yolks set at moderate heat and curdle if overheated. Gentle indirect heat thickens the dressing evenly, and the coats-the-spoon test shows when it is ready.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, flour, vinegar, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, vinegar, butter. 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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