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Salad

White Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with sweet cream, corn starch, egg whites, vinegar, salad oil, sugar, mustard, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

White Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the cream almost to boiling.

  2. Stir in the corn starch or flour, previously mixed with cold milk, and boil for 2 minutes while stirring constantly.

  3. Add the sugar and let it cool slightly.

Finish the dressing

  1. Once nearly cold, beat in the egg whites.

  2. When completely cool, add the salad oil, pepper, mustard, and salt.

  3. When ready to serve the salad, add the vinegar and pour the dressing over it immediately.

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. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Corn + mustardtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together463 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

Sweet cream
Provides richness and a creamy body to the dressing.
Corn starch or flour
Thickens the cream when boiled, giving the dressing body.
Egg whites
Whipped to add lightness and a soft, airy texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Salad oil
Adds fat for smoothness and mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boiling the thickener. Starch must boil for the full time while stirring constantly so it swells and thickens evenly; undercooked starch leaves a raw, pasty taste and lumps form if it is not stirred.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

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