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Salad

Denver Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with lemon juice, mustard, salt, paprika, and heavy cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,816 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Denver Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix lemon juice, mustard, salt, and paprika in a bowl.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of cream to the mixture.

  3. Whip the remaining cream until stiff peaks form.

  4. Gradually fold the whipped cream into the seasoning mixture.

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. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Mustard + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,935 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,640 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

Heavy cream
Whipped cream adds air and body, giving the dressing a light, creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the cream.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavor that seasons the dressing.

The step that matters

Gradually fold the whipped cream into the seasoning mixture. Whipped cream is full of trapped air. Adding it all at once or stirring hard deflates it, so folding gently in small portions keeps the dressing light and smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, cream):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, 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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