Skip to main content
Salad

A Simple Salad Dressing

A salad dressing made by emulsifying butter, vinegar, eggs, celery seed, sugar, salt, pepper, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

A Simple Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the vinegar.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the well-beaten yolks of the eggs.

  4. Return the mixture to the heat and stir until it thickens.

  5. Add the celery seed, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  6. Let the dressing cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Fold in the whipped cream or sour cream before serving.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the hot vinegar mixture as they set, giving the dressing body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dressing's flavour.
Whipped cream or sour cream
Folded in at the end to lighten and enrich the dressing's texture.
White sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with gentle sweetness.

The step that matters

Pour the hot mixture over the egg yolks. Adding hot liquid to yolks too quickly can scramble them. Pouring slowly while beating keeps the yolks smooth, so the mixture can then be heated and thickened evenly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes