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Salad

Cream Salad Dressing

A dressing made with vinegar, egg, flour, salt, mustard, sugar, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mix all dry ingredients with vinegar.

  2. Pour slowly over the beaten egg.

  3. Cook in a double boiler until thick and smooth.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

Serve

  1. When using, mix in the proportion of 1 part dressing to 2 parts cream.

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

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

  3. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Flour
Stabilizes the cooked dressing and helps it thicken without curdling.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tangy flavor.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and lightness, mellowing the sharp dressing when mixed in.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that balances the richness of the egg and cream.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler until thick and smooth. Egg proteins set gently with indirect heat. Too much heat scrambles the egg and makes the dressing grainy, so the double boiler keeps the temperature moderate.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, flour, sugar, 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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