Skip to main content
Drink

Boiled Dressing

A boiled dressing made with egg, sugar, salt, mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Boiled Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg, sugar, salt, and mustard together thoroughly.

  2. Add the weak vinegar and boil the mixture until it thickens, stirring constantly.

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

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

  3. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Egg proteins set as the mixture heats, thickening the dressing into a creamy body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity and tang that defines the dressing's flavor.
Ground mustard
Adds a pungent, sharp flavor that complements the vinegar and egg.

The step that matters

Boil until it thickens while stirring constantly. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat, so constant stirring keeps heat even and prevents the egg from curdling or scrambling on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, 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.

You might also like

Raspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesSugar VinegarSugar Vinegar20 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipes