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Salad Dressing for Tomatoes

A creamy dressing made with butter, milk, vinegar, mustard, and eggs, served over sliced tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 for Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Scald the milk and melt the butter in it.

  2. Pour the milk and butter mixture over the beaten eggs.

  3. Add the salt and vinegar slowly while stirring continuously.

  4. Cook in a pot of hot water until thickened like custard.

  5. Once cooled, stir in the mustard.

Serve

  1. Slice the tomatoes and arrange them in layers on a serving dish.

  2. Garnish with salad or parsley.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,482 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing into a custard-like texture as they cook gently.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness and a savory bite to balance the richness.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, softening the custard base.

The step that matters

Cook in a pot of hot water until thickened like custard. Egg proteins set with gentle heat. If the heat is too high or the eggs cook too fast, they can curdle or scramble instead of thickening smoothly. Stirring while adding the hot milk and vinegar helps keep the custard even.

Swap the tomato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, vinegar, mustard, sugar, egg, parsley. 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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