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Salad

Salad Dressing No. 2

A creamy salad dressing made with sour cream, eggs, sugar, flour, mustard, salt, olive oil, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar 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 ↓

Salad Dressing No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, mustard, and salt) in a bowl.

  2. Add the eggs one by one, stirring well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the olive oil, then the sour cream, and finally the vinegar.

  4. Cook in a double boiler, stirring constantly until it reaches the desired consistency.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg proteins set as the mixture heats, thickening the dressing into a creamy body.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a tangy body that keeps the dressing smooth.
Flour
Starch thickens the dressing and helps stabilise it during cooking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler, stirring constantly. Egg proteins set at fairly low heat and can curdle or scramble if overheated. Gentle, constant stirring over indirect heat keeps the mixture smooth and thickens it evenly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

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