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Salad

Salad Dressing Without Eggs

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with mustard, vinegar, sugar, salt, butter, and cream, without eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Salad Dressing Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine mustard, vinegar, sugar, salt, and butter.

  2. Cook over simmering water, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the cream until well combined.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Prepared mustard
Adds sharp flavour that balances the sweetness and richness of the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to offset the acidity of the vinegar and mustard.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the dressing taste smooth.
Sweet or sour cream
Adds creaminess and body, mellowing the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cook over simmering water while stirring constantly. Gentle, constant stirring over indirect heat keeps the mixture from scorching or curdling. The mixture thickens as the heat works evenly through it, so it should be thick enough before the cream is added off the heat.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, vinegar, sugar, butter, 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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