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Salad

My Favorite Salad Dressing

A thickened mustard-based salad dressing made with eggs, milk, oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

My Favorite Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix mustard, salt, sugar, and flour with a little milk until smooth.

  2. Beat in the eggs.

  3. Add oil, milk, and vinegar, stirring thoroughly.

  4. Heat in a double boiler until the mixture thickens to a creamy consistency.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing and bind it into a creamy emulsion as they cook.
Flour
Stabilizes the emulsion and adds body so the dressing thickens smoothly.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps emulsify the oil and milk.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.
Oil
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and smooth texture.

The step that matters

Heat in a double boiler until creamy. Egg proteins set gradually as they warm. Gentle, indirect heat lets the dressing thicken evenly; direct high heat can scramble the eggs and make the dressing grainy.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, milk, egg, 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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