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Salad

Eggless Boiled Salad Dressing

A boiled salad dressing made without eggs, using flour, sugar, vinegar, cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Eggless Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the dry ingredients together.

  2. Add the cream and stir until smooth.

  3. Pour the mixture into boiling vinegar and cook until thickened.

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

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

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

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

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Flour
Starch that thickens the dressing as it heats and gelatinizes.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that cuts through the richness and balances the sweetness.
Cream
Adds fat and body, giving the dressing a smooth, rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to soften the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into boiling vinegar and cook until thickened.. Flour starch only thickens fully once it is heated while stirred. Undercooking leaves the dressing thin and tasting raw and floury, and stirring prevents lumps from forming.

“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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