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Salad

Salad Dressing

A dressing made with butter, sugar, mustard, salt, cayenne pepper, flour, eggs, vinegar, milk, and optional apples, celery, walnuts, grapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Stir in the mustard, salt, cayenne pepper, and flour.

  3. In a double boiler, stir in the beaten eggs.

  4. Alternately add the vinegar and milk while stirring continuously.

  5. If the vinegar is strong, use ½ cup vinegar and ½ cup water instead.

  6. Cook until the mixture thickens.

Add the fruit and serve

  1. Dice the raw apples and celery, and mix them into the dressing.

  2. Optionally, add chopped walnuts and halved grapes on top before serving on lettuce leaves.

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. 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
Coagulate when heated in the double boiler, thickening the dressing into a creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel to the dressing.
Flour
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, helping it hold together.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tangy flavor.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture thickens. Egg proteins set with gentle heat, so cooking slowly in a double boiler and stirring keeps the dressing smooth. Too much heat can curdle the eggs.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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