Skip to main content
Salad

Salad Cream "Without Oil"

A creamy salad dressing made with butter, vinegar, egg yolks, cream, salt, cayenne pepper, and white pepper, without oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Salad Cream "Without Oil"

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a deep bowl-shaped saucepan, boil the vinegar and butter together.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  3. Gradually pour the boiling vinegar and butter into the yolks while continuing to beat.

  4. Return the mixture to the heat, beating rapidly until it begins to thicken.

Finish the dressing

  1. Slowly pour in the cream while continuing to beat until the dressing resembles cream or boiled custard.

  2. Do not let it boil, or it will curdle.

  3. Add the salt and peppers, then beat in a pan of ice water until cold.

  4. Use a porcelain-lined saucepan 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + white peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Vinegar + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the dressing as they heat, giving it a custard-like body.
Butter
Adds richness and a creamy mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the butter and yolks.
Thin cream
Adds moisture and softness, loosening the thickened base into a pourable dressing.

The step that matters

Do not let it boil. Egg yolks set when overheated and curdle, so the dressing turns grainy instead of smooth. Heating gently while beating keeps the emulsion creamy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, egg, cream, 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes