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Corn Starch Dressing

A vinaigrette thickened with corn starch and boiled water, mixed with egg yolks, oil, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

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

Corn Starch Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, mix corn starch and vinegar thoroughly.

  2. Add boiling water and cook over boiling water until very thick and smooth.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in egg yolks.

Finish the dressing

  1. Once cooled, add oil, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the dressing into a smooth, stable body as it cooks in boiling water.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsifying lecithin that helps hold the oil suspended in the thickened base.
Oil
Provides fat and silkiness, giving the dressing a rich mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Lemon juice
Adds fresh acidity that sharpens flavour and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Cool before adding the oil. If the starch base is still hot when the yolks or oil go in, the yolks can scramble and the emulsion can break, leaving the dressing greasy and separated instead of smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, corn, 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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