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Dessert

Boiled Salad Dressing

A hot salad dressing made by boiling a mixture of salt, mustard, sugar, corn starch, cayenne pepper, egg yolks, butter, milk, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Boiled Salad Dressing

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 ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift the dry ingredients: salt, mustard, sugar, corn starch, and cayenne pepper.

Make the dressing

  1. Add the beaten egg yolks, melted butter, milk, and diluted vinegar slowly while beating constantly.

  2. Cook in a double boiler until the mixture thickens.

  3. Cool and thin with cream if necessary.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Mustard + vinegartop 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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Pepper + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken and emulsify the dressing, giving it a rich, smooth body as they set with heat.
Corn starch
Thickens the mixture as it heats, giving the dressing body without relying on eggs alone.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang and balances the richness.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the liquids while beating. Pouring the egg yolks, butter, milk and vinegar in slowly while beating constantly keeps the mixture smooth. Adding them too fast can make the eggs curdle or separate.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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