Skip to main content
Salad

Salad Dressing

A custard-style salad dressing made with sugar, mustard, salt, pepper, butter, cream, vinegar, egg yolks, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

  1. In a saucepan, mix sugar, mustard, salt, white pepper, butter, and cream.

  2. Heat the mixture until melted.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine vinegar with beaten egg yolks.

  4. Add the vinegar mixture to the saucepan.

  5. Stir in cornstarch and cook until the dressing thickens to a custard consistency.

  6. If desired, add a little extract of celery.

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. 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. Sugar + vinegartop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they set during cooking, giving it a custard-like body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the dressing.
Cornstarch
Thickens the dressing by swelling in heat and binding the liquid.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sugar and richness.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking the thickened dressing. Egg yolks can curdle if the mixture gets too hot or cooks too fast. Cooking gently while stirring keeps the custard smooth, and cornstarch helps stabilise it as it thickens.

Swap the celery

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

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

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

More salad dressing recipes

Boiled 72Cream 68French 58Cooked 45Fruit 41Chicken 31 See all 528 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipesFrench DressingFrench Dressing58 recipes