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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy salad dressing made with egg yolks, cream, mustard, salt, sugar, cayenne, oil, vinegar, herbs, cucumbers, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

Why it works: Mustard and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Rub the egg yolks smooth with the cream until well blended and cold.

  2. Mix in the mustard, salt, sugar, and cayenne pepper if using.

  3. Add the oil and vinegar, stirring until combined.

  4. Gently fold in the herbs.

Serve

  1. Slice cucumbers and onions, and serve with the dressing.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar, giving the dressing a smooth, thick body.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sharp bite of the vinegar.
Thick mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps hold the emulsion together.
Oil
Supplies fat that gives the dressing a silky, rounded texture.
White wine vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Adding the oil and vinegar. Oil must be added gradually while stirring so the egg yolk can emulsify it. Adding it too fast can split the dressing into separate oil and liquid layers.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, mustard, sugar, pepper, white wine, 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.

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