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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with egg yolk, mustard, sugar, cayenne, olive oil, lemon, and whipped heavy cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 base

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolk, mustard, salt, sugar, and cayenne until smooth.

  2. Slowly add the olive oil drop by drop while stirring vigorously.

Finish the dressing

  1. When the mixture thickens, alternate adding lemon juice and more oil until both are used.

  2. Whip the cream until stiff and gently fold it into the dressing.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Its lecithin emulsifies the oil and water, holding the dressing together and making it thick.
Olive oil
Supplies the fat that, dispersed into droplets, gives the dressing its rich, creamy body.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and air from whipping, giving a lighter, softer texture to the finished dressing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil and yolk.
Dry mustard
Acts as a second emulsifier that helps stabilise the emulsion and adds sharp flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be added drop by drop while whisking so it breaks into tiny droplets that the yolk can surround. Adding it too fast splits the emulsion, leaving the dressing thin and oily instead of thick and creamy.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, pepper, olive, lemon, cream. 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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