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Salad

Boiled Salad Dressing

A salad dressing made from egg yolks, butter, vinegar, mustard, cream, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Boiled Salad Dressing

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 ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix egg yolks and butter thoroughly.

  2. Scald mustard with a little hot water.

Cook and cool

  1. Combine all ingredients in a double boiler, stirring until thick.

  2. Beat the mixture until cold.

Thin and use

  1. Before using, thin with cream and lemon juice.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 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

Egg yolks
Thicken as they cook and help bind the dressing into a smooth emulsion.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that balances the richness of the yolks and butter.
Mustard
Helps emulsify the fat and adds a sharp, savoury flavour.
Cream
Thins the thickened dressing and adds softness and moisture.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity and thins the dressing just before serving.

The step that matters

Stirring in the double boiler until thick. Egg yolks thicken gently over steady, moderate heat. If the heat is too high, the yolks scramble and the dressing turns grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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