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Salad Dressing That Will Keep

A creamy salad dressing made with eggs, oil, lemon juice, cream, mustard, sugar, salt, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 That Will Keep

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing base

  1. Beat the eggs very lightly.

  2. Gradually beat in the salad oil.

  3. Add the strained lemon juice.

Season the cream

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the cream with mustard, sugar, salt, black pepper, and red pepper until smooth.

  2. Combine the cream mixture with the egg and oil mixture.

  3. Add the vinegar and adjust to taste for sourness.

Thicken and cool

  1. Set the bowl in a tin of hot water and stir continuously until it thickens.

  2. Remove from heat and place the bowl in a dish of ice water, continuing to stir until smooth.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + mustardtop 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

Eggs
Egg proteins thicken gently with heat and help emulsify the oil into the dressing.
Salad oil
Fat that forms the body of the dressing and gives it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds fat and body, softening the sharpness and giving a creamier texture.
Mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help hold the oil and liquids together and add sharp flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the eggs and oil.

The step that matters

Thickening over hot water. Egg proteins set when heated, so the bowl must be stirred constantly over gentle hot water. Overheating scrambles the eggs and leaves lumps, while stopping too early leaves the dressing thin.

“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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