Name: Sour Cream Salad Dressing
Ingredients: 1 cup sour cream; 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar; 1 teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon paprika; ¼ teaspoon ground mustard; onion juice to taste

Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sour Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

In a bowl, combine sour cream, lemon juice or vinegar, salt, paprika, ground mustard, and onion juice.
Beat the mixture until firm.

Serve

Serve with string beans, potato salad, or lima bean salad that have been marinated with French Dressing.

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.

Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,816 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Cream + oniontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,827 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Lemon + oniontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,646 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Cream + mustardtop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,935 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

Cream and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sour cream: Forms the creamy body of the dressing and provides its tangy richness.
Lemon juice or vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the sour cream.
Ground mustard: Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that gives the dressing depth.