Skip to main content
Drink

Cooked Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette made by cooking oil, flour, mustard, egg yolks, milk, vinegar, and butter.

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

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

Make the dressing

  1. Mix the flour, salt, and mustard with the egg yolks until light.

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

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

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

Notes

  1. You can substitute one whole egg for the 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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 during gentle cooking, and add richness.
Flour
Stabilizes the emulsion and thickens the dressing so it coats the spoon.
Butter
Adds fat and smooth richness to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the yolks and butter.
Milk
Dilutes the mixture and adds creaminess and body.
Oil
Adds fat and mouthfeel to the dressing.

The step that matters

Cook gently in a double boiler. Egg yolks thicken only over gentle heat. Too much heat makes them scramble and curdle, which is why the record advises cooling the pan in cold water and beating to smooth it.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes