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Salad

Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with vinegar, butter, sweet cream, egg yolks, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, heat the vinegar and butter until hot.

  2. Whisk together the sweet cream and egg yolks in a bowl.

  3. Add the cream mixture to the saucepan and bring to a boil.

Season and finish

  1. Once cooled, season with salt, pepper, and mustard to taste.

  2. Add celery salt 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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing and help bind the fat and liquid into a smooth emulsion.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rounded flavour and silkier texture.

The step that matters

Bringing the cream and yolk mixture to a boil. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so they can scramble and turn grainy if the mixture boils hard. Heat gently and keep stirring so the dressing thickens smoothly.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, egg, butter, cream, pepper, mustard):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

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