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Salad

Lettuce Dressing

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with butter, flour, vinegar, water, sugar, mustard, cayenne pepper, salt, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Lettuce Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, rub the butter and flour together until well combined.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the vinegar and water, and bring to a boil.

Make the dressing

  1. Stir the butter and flour mixture into the boiling vinegar and water.

  2. Add the sugar, ground mustard, cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, and the lightly beaten egg.

  3. Mix well and serve over lettuce.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, and together with flour helps give the dressing body.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture as it heats, giving the dressing a smoother, heavier texture.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dressing's tangy flavor.
Egg
Adds richness and helps thicken and emulsify the dressing as it cooks.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg into the dressing. The egg must be added to the hot mixture gradually and stirred constantly, or it can scramble. Egg proteins set with heat, so the dressing needs to thicken gently rather than cook in clumps.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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