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Salad

Salad Sauce

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, vinegar, olive oil, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Salad Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Remove the yolk from the hard-boiled egg and mash it in a bowl with a wooden spoon.

  2. Add the raw egg yolk, flour, salt, and pepper; mix well.

  3. Stir in the vinegar, then gradually add the olive oil while stirring continuously.

  4. Add more vinegar and continue adding oil until all is incorporated.

Season and store

  1. Season with chopped onions, parsley, tarragon, chervil, cayenne, and melted butter.

  2. Chop the egg white and mix it in if desired.

  3. Store in a corked container for freshness.

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. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and vinegar, holding the dressing together and giving it body.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Mashed smooth as a base that adds richness and helps the dressing thicken.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that forms the creamy body of the dressing when whisked in slowly.
All-purpose flour
Adds body and helps stabilize the emulsion so it resists separating.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually while stirring continuously. Oil added too fast cannot be dispersed into the yolk mixture, so the emulsion breaks and the dressing separates. Slow addition with constant stirring lets tiny oil droplets stay suspended in the egg yolk.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, pepper, vinegar, olive, parsley, tarragon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, pepper, vinegar, olive, parsley, tarragon. 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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