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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with egg yolks, butter, cream, vinegar, mustard, lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add the butter, cream, vinegar, and mustard to the yolks. Mix well.

  3. Place the bowl over a pan of boiling water and stir until the mixture thickens slightly, like boiled custard.

Finish and season

  1. Once cooled, thin the dressing with lemon juice.

  2. Season with pepper and salt to taste.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the dressing as they set gently over heat.
Butter
Adds richness and body, helping the dressing feel smooth and creamy.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, mellowing the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.
Prepared mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion and adds a sharp, savory note.

The step that matters

Thickening over boiling water. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but can scramble if the heat is too high. Stir constantly over simmering, not boiling, water and stop once the mixture coats a spoon slightly, like custard.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, cream, vinegar, lemon, pepper. 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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