Skip to main content
Salad

Tomato Dressing

A tomato-based dressing made with eggs, sugar, salt, mustard, sweet cream, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and vinegar 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 ↓

Tomato Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the eggs well in a bowl.

  2. Add sugar, salt, mustard, sweet cream, and vinegar.

  3. Place the bowl in a basin of boiling water.

  4. Stir until the mixture thickens to the consistency of cream.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg proteins set when heated, thickening the dressing into a creamy consistency.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness and sweetness of the dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the vinegar.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the dressing a smoother, softer texture.
Prepared mustard
Adds a sharp, savoury flavour that complements the vinegar and eggs.

The step that matters

Stir over boiling water until it thickens. Egg proteins set gradually with gentle heat. If the mixture gets too hot or is not stirred constantly, the eggs can scramble and the dressing turns lumpy instead of smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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