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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with milk, butter, flour, eggs, sugar, mustard, salt, vinegar, and optional cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

Why it works: Milk and butter 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Mix butter and flour together until smooth, then add to the hot milk.

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl, then mix in the sugar, mustard, and salt.

  2. Slowly add the hot milk mixture to the egg mixture while stirring continuously.

  3. Stir in the vinegar and cayenne if using.

Store

  1. Store in a cool place.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they set with gentle heat, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture, giving the dressing body so it coats the salad well.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tangy flavour.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the thickened eggs and flour set into.

The step that matters

Slowly add the hot milk mixture to the egg mixture while stirring continuously.. Adding hot liquid to eggs too fast can scramble them. Adding it slowly while stirring gradually warms the eggs, so the dressing thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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