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Salad

Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with vinegar, butter, sugar, eggs, mustard, celery seed, cabbage, celery, horseradish, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Boil vinegar, butter, and sugar together.

  2. Beat the egg yolks or whole eggs with cream and add the egg mixture to the boiled mixture.

  3. Mix in mustard and celery seed.

Assemble the salad

  1. In a separate bowl, combine cabbage, celery, hard-boiled egg, horseradish, and mustard.

  2. Mix with vinegar, pepper, and salt to taste.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Celery + cabbagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks or whole eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and bind it into a creamy emulsion.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth body to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the sugar.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, mellowing the dressing's tang.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad, providing crunch and body.
Horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that gives the salad its bite.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the boiled mixture. If the hot liquid is poured in too quickly or the eggs are not kept moving, the eggs can scramble into lumps. Adding the eggs gradually while stirring gently keeps the custard-style dressing smooth and thickened.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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