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Salad

Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with eggs, mustard, sugar, flour, butter, cayenne pepper, milk, and vinegar.

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

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat together the eggs, mustard, salt, sugar, flour, butter, and cayenne pepper in a bowl.

  2. Add the milk and stir well.

  3. Place the mixture in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly until it boils.

  4. Remove from heat and thin the dressing with vinegar to taste.

Serve

  1. For fruit salad, fold in whipped cream and additional sugar if desired.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 cook and set, giving it body.
Flour
Stabilises the mixture so it thickens smoothly without splitting.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs and flour thicken.

The step that matters

Stirring constantly until it boils. Egg proteins can curdle or scramble if the mixture overheats or sits unstirred on the heat. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly, and the flour helps the custard-like base thicken smoothly once it reaches a boil.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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