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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with eggs, butter, mustard, vinegar, water, salt, sugar, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

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 ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add the softened butter, mustard, and water; mix until smooth.

  3. Stir in the vinegar and boiling water.

Make the dressing

  1. Place the bowl over a kettle and stir until thickened like cream.

  2. In a separate saucepan, warm the vinegar.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and stir for a few minutes until it thickens like custard.

Finish

  1. Mix in the salt, sugar, mustard, pepper, and remaining butter.

  2. Stir well and pour into a container.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg proteins set with gentle heat, thickening the dressing into a custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps keep the dressing smooth and blended.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Thickening the eggs over heat. Egg proteins thicken as they warm and set. Heating too fast or stirring too little can scramble them into lumps, so keep the heat gentle and stir constantly until the mixture coats a spoon.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, vinegar, sugar, 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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