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Salad

Simple Salad Dressing

A simple salad dressing made with sugar, flour, salt, pepper, celery salt, egg, vinegar, water, butter, and optional mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Simple Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix together sugar, flour, salt, red pepper, and celery salt.

  2. Add the beaten egg, vinegar, and water, and stir well.

  3. Boil the mixture for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly until it thickens to a paste.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the walnut-sized butter and enough cream or olive oil to achieve a proper consistency.

  5. If desired, add a little mustard for extra flavor.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Thickens the dressing as it cooks and adds richness to the mixture.
Flour
Stabilizes the cooked mixture so it thickens into a paste.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness and richness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, rounder mouthfeel to the finished dressing.
Cream or olive oil
Thins the thickened base and adds moisture and body.

The step that matters

Boiling until it thickens to a paste. The egg and flour must be stirred constantly over heat so the egg proteins set and starch thickens evenly. If the mixture boils too hard or is left unstirred, the egg can scramble and leave lumps.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, pepper, egg, vinegar, butter, walnut. 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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