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Salad

Cream Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with hard‑boiled egg yolks, mustard, vinegar, and cold cream.

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

Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs to a smooth paste.

  2. Gradually add salt, sugar, cayenne, mustard, and vinegar to the egg yolks.

  3. Whip the cold cream until thick and smooth.

  4. Beat the whipped cream into the mixture, one tablespoon at a time, using a whisk.

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 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 yolks
Emulsify with the cream and give the dressing its rich body.
Cream
Adds fat and whips into air-filled volume that gives a light, creamy texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Beat the whipped cream into the mixture, one tablespoon at a time. Adding the cream slowly lets the yolk mixture emulsify with it gradually. Adding it all at once can break the emulsion, leaving the dressing thin or separated.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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