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Salad

Delicious Salad Dressing

A creamy salad dressing made with egg, sour cream, butter, flour, mustard, celery salt, sugar, olive oil, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Delicious Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg thoroughly in a bowl.

  2. In a saucepan, combine sour cream, sugar, butter, flour, celery salt, prepared mustard, dry mustard, and salt.

  3. Cook over low heat, stirring until well mixed and slightly thickened. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  4. Stir in olive oil and lemon juice before serving.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Celery + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,667 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks and adds richness to the body.
Sour cream
Provides creamy body and a tangy flavor to the dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of mustard and lemon.
Flour
Helps thicken the dressing as it heats with the other ingredients.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the dressing.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat, stirring. Gentle heat and constant stirring keep the egg and starch from scrambling or lumping, allowing the dressing to thicken smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sugar, butter, flour, mustard, olive. 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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