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Salad

Salad Mixture

A vinaigrette made from hard‑boiled egg yolks, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

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 ↓

Salad Mixture

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sieve the hard‑boiled egg yolks into a bowl.

  2. Add the mustard, salt, Worcestershire sauce or mushroom ketchup, salad oil, vinegar, and pepper, then stir well to combine.

  3. Pour over salads according to the quantity needed.

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 + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Vinegar + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Mustard + white peppertop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together618 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

Egg yolks
Sieved yolks emulsify with the oil and vinegar, giving the dressing a smooth, thick body.
Salad oil
Supplies the fat that gives the dressing its richness and silky mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Colman's mustard
Mustard contains emulsifiers that help hold the oil and yolk mixture together, and adds sharp flavour.
Worcestershire sauce or mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth that rounds out the flavour of the dressing.

The step that matters

Sieve the yolks finely before adding the other ingredients. Sieving breaks the yolks into fine particles that blend smoothly into the dressing. Lumps left in the yolk stay grainy and do not emulsify well with the oil and vinegar.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, sauce, 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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