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Salad

Salad Dressing, No. 1

A simple vinaigrette made with sugar, mustard, egg yolks, olive oil, and milk or thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,950 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Salad Dressing, No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar and mustard together.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix thoroughly.

  3. Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop while stirring continuously.

  4. Finally, stir in the milk or thick 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 + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Olive + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,828 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Emulsify the oil into the dressing, giving it a thick, creamy body.
Olive oil
Provides fat and richness, forming the body of the emulsion with the yolks.
Mustard
Acts as an emulsifier that helps hold the oil and water-based liquid together.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the sharpness of the mustard.
Milk or thick cream
Adds moisture and softens the texture of the finished dressing.

The step that matters

Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop while stirring continuously. Adding oil too fast overwhelms the egg yolks, so the emulsion breaks and the dressing separates into a greasy, watery mixture instead of thickening smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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