Skip to main content
Drink

Sour Cream Salad Dressing

A thickened dressing made from eggs, sour cream, vinegar, sugar, cornstarch, mustard, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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 ↓

Sour Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the eggs lightly in a bowl.

  2. Add the sour cream, vinegar, sugar, cornstarch, mustard, and salt to the eggs.

  3. Cook the mixture in a double boiler over simmering water, stirring constantly until it thickens moderately.

  4. Remove from heat and beat in the butter until fully incorporated.

Store

  1. Store in a cool place; it will keep for weeks.

  2. If it thickens, thin it with additional cream.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set and thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it body.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a creamy, smooth texture to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tangy flavour.
Cornstarch
Thickens the dressing as it heats, giving it a stable consistency.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rounded mouthfeel and richer flavour.

The step that matters

Cook gently over simmering water while stirring constantly. Eggs can scramble if overheated, so a double boiler and constant stirring keep the heat gentle. Cornstarch and egg proteins thicken the mixture evenly, and stopping at moderate thickness avoids a grainy or lumpy texture.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, vinegar, sugar, butter. 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