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Salad

Boiled Salad Dressing

A hot salad dressing made with mustard, sugar, salt, egg yolk, cayenne, milk, flour, butter, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Boiled Salad Dressing

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the mustard, powdered sugar, salt, and cayenne in a bowl.

  2. Add the egg yolk, melted butter, and milk, and stir until combined.

  3. Place the bowl over hot water and stir until the mixture begins to thicken.

  4. Stir in the hot vinegar.

  5. Once thickened to the consistency of heavy cream, strain and cool.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 yolk
Emulsifies the fats and, when gently heated, thickens the dressing into a creamy texture.
Flour
Stabilizes the thickened mixture so it holds body and resists separating as it cools.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the egg and flour thicken into a pourable dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the yolk and butter.

The step that matters

Thickening over hot water. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently but can curdle or scramble if overheated. Stirring over moderate hot water, not direct heat, lets the mixture thicken smoothly before the vinegar is added.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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