Skip to main content
Salad

Cream Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with egg yolks, corn starch, mustard, sugar, salt, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, vinegar, cream, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, corn starch, mustard, sugar, salt, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and vinegar.

  2. Cook the mixture over low heat, stirring until it thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the cream.

  4. Add the olive oil and mix well.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the dressing as they set with gentle heat.
Corn starch
Thickens the mixture as it heats, giving body to the dressing.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Olive oil
Adds fat for richness and helps hold the emulsion together.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing a sharp, tangy flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavor.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat, stirring until thickened. Egg yolks can scramble if heated too fast or left unstirred. Gentle, constant stirring lets the starch and yolks thicken evenly into a smooth dressing.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, corn, mustard, sugar, pepper, vinegar, 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.

More cream salad dressing recipes

Sour 17Whipped 5 See all 68 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes