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Salad

A Royal Salad Dressing

A creamy salad dressing made with hard‑boiled eggs, rich cream, mustard, sugar, salt, pepper, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

A Royal Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Boil the eggs hard and let them cool.

  2. Remove the yolks and mix them with the cream until smooth.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine mustard, sugar, salt, and black pepper.

  4. Add the mustard mixture to the cream and yolks.

  5. Gradually add vinegar until the dressing is as thick as cream.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over lettuce or other raw salad.

  2. Garnish with the egg whites, sliced into rings.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  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
Their fat and emulsifying lecithin bind the cream and vinegar into a smooth, thick dressing.
Rich cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the dressing a smooth, rich body.
Mustard
Its natural emulsifiers help hold the dressing together and add sharp flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and thickens it as it is stirred in.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with gentle sweetness.

The step that matters

Gradually add vinegar until the dressing is as thick as cream.. Adding vinegar slowly lets the yolk and mustard emulsifiers absorb it without breaking. Adding it all at once can split the dressing into oily, watery layers.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sugar, pepper, 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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