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Salad

Salad Dressing with Onions

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with vinegar, mustard, salt, sugar, flour, eggs, oil or butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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 ↓

Salad Dressing with Onions

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak slices of onions in vinegar overnight.

  2. Put the vinegar on the stove and bring to a boil.

  3. Add mustard, salt, sugar, and flour to the boiling vinegar.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten eggs and olive oil or butter.

  5. Thin the dressing with cream as needed.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that flavours the dressing and softens the onions.
Eggs
Bind the dressing and thicken it as they set gently in the warm liquid.
Flour
Thickens the boiling vinegar so the dressing becomes smooth and body-rich.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.
Olive oil or butter
Adds fat for a richer, rounder mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir the beaten eggs into the dressing off the heat. Eggs scramble if they meet very hot liquid too quickly. Removing the pan from the heat before stirring them in lets them thicken the dressing smoothly instead of curdling it.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, flour, egg, olive, 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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