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Salad

Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette made with egg yolks, mustard, cayenne pepper, white pepper, salt, olive oil, lemon juice, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Braun, Emil · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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. In a deep soup plate, place the yolks of four eggs, two teaspoons best ground mustard, three-quarters teaspoon of salt, half teaspoon cayenne pepper, and half teaspoon white pepper. With a large fork or spoon, stir continually in one direction.

  2. With the other hand, pour in the best olive oil slowly from time to time from the bottle. As soon as it commences to bind and get stringy, add quickly a little lemon juice or vinegar.

  3. Keep stirring continually until three-quarters of a pint of oil, the juice of one lemon, and one-half gill of vinegar are used up. Stir up well, then place at once on ice.

Fix a broken dressing

  1. If the dressing breaks, add quickly another yolk of egg and stir, holding back the oil for a minute.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

229Calories
8 gProtein
20 gFat
8 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 8 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Olive Oil1 tbsp (14g)119
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Chili1 tsp (2.7g)8
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Mustard1 tsp (5g) yellow3
Vinegar1 tbsp (15ml) distilled3
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Braun, Emil. 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. See the original page.

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. Pepper + lemontop 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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Their emulsifiers hold the oil in tiny droplets, giving the dressing a smooth, thick body.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the dressing, suspended within the yolk mixture as fine droplets.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion so the dressing is less likely to separate.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps the emulsion set.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly while stirring constantly. Egg yolk lecithin can only coat so many oil droplets at once. Pouring too fast or stopping to stir lets the oil separate out, so the dressing breaks.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, mustard, lemon, 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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