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Salad

Ronceverte Salad Dressing

A creamy salad dressing made with butter, milk, flour, eggs, sugar, vinegar, mustard, cayenne pepper, paprika, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Ronceverte Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until it bubbles.

  3. Add half the milk.

Make the custard

  1. Transfer the mixture to a double boiler over hot water.

  2. Beat the eggs, then add all seasonings and vinegar.

  3. Stir this mixture into the double boiler.

  4. Add the remaining milk.

  5. Continue stirring until it thickens to a custard-like consistency.

Store

  1. Pour into a fruit jar.

  2. Keep covered in a cool place.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Set and thicken the dressing as they cook gently into a custard-like texture.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat, giving body to the dressing.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, mellow mouthfeel.
Milk
Provides moisture and a creamy base that the eggs and flour set into.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Continue stirring until it thickens to a custard-like consistency.. Egg proteins set when heated, so the mixture must stay over gentle hot water and be stirred constantly. Too much heat can curdle the eggs and leave the dressing grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, sugar, vinegar, egg, pepper, flour. 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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