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Salad

Cream Dressing

A creamy salad dressing made with egg yolks, mustard, cream, vinegar, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cream Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mix the egg yolks with pepper, salt, mustard, and any other condiments you like.

  2. Gradually stir in the cream.

  3. Add the vinegar.

  4. Mix cream with pepper and salt.

  5. Add vinegar or pour the mixture over the salad.

Serve

  1. Toss the salad with the dressing until well coated.

  2. Serve with lettuce for best results.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the cream and mustard into a smooth, thick dressing that clings to leaves.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mustard
Helps bind the emulsion and adds a sharp, savoury bite.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the cream. Adding cream slowly lets the egg yolk and mustard emulsify it into a smooth, stable dressing. Adding it all at once can cause it to split or stay thin and greasy.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, mustard, cream, 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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