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Salad

Salad Dressing

A salad dressing made with olive oil, mustard, sugar, paprika, lemon juice, vinegar, and eggs.

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 vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chill the olive oil, bowl, and spoon before starting.

  2. Separate the eggs.

  3. In a bowl, mix the dry ingredients: salt, mustard, powdered sugar, and paprika.

Make the emulsion

  1. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  2. Slowly add the olive oil, one drop at a time, while stirring constantly.

  3. As the mixture thickens, alternate adding lemon juice and vinegar to thin it out.

  4. Continue adding the remaining olive oil until fully incorporated.

Finish

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites at the end.

  2. For a white dressing, use all lemon juice.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks contain lecithin, which helps hold the oil and vinegar together as an emulsion.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that gives the dressing its body and rich mouthfeel.
Mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion and adds a sharp, tangy flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and thins the thickening mixture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps loosen the emulsion.
Powdered sugar
Adds mild sweetness that balances the sharpness of the acids.

The step that matters

Adding the olive oil slowly. Oil must be dispersed into the yolk mixture in tiny droplets while stirring constantly. Adding it too fast overwhelms the yolks' ability to bind it, so the emulsion breaks and the dressing separates instead of thickening.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, sugar, vinegar, egg, olive):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, sugar, vinegar, egg, olive. 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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