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Salad

Boiled Salad Dressing

A salad dressing made by boiling potato flour, vinegar, and seasonings, then folding in egg yolk, whipped egg white, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Boiled Salad Dressing

Why it works: Tarragon and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, mix potato flour, mustard, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add water and both vinegars.

  3. Boil for 2 minutes.

  4. Cool slightly.

Thicken the dressing

  1. Stir in the egg yolk mixed with 1 teaspoon of water.

  2. Cook until thickened, but do not boil.

  3. Remove from heat and stir for a few minutes.

Finish and cool

  1. Fold in the whipped egg white until combined.

  2. Cool completely.

  3. Gently mix in the whipped cream.

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. Tarragon + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + tarragontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Potato flour
Thickens the dressing so it coats the leaves rather than running off.
Egg
The yolk thickens with gentle heat and the whipped white adds lightness.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother mouthfeel to the finished dressing.
Malt vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the richness of the egg and cream.

The step that matters

Cook until thickened, but do not boil. Egg yolk proteins set and thicken with gentle heat, but boiling can curdle the egg and leave the dressing lumpy and thin.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, malt, vinegar, tarragon, egg, cream, mustard):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, malt, vinegar, tarragon, egg, cream, mustard. 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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