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Salad

Salad Dressing for Fish Salad

A dressing made with egg yolks, mustard, sugar, spices, sardines or capers, cream, vinegar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salad Dressing for Fish Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs until smooth.

  2. Mix in the mustard, sugar, salt, cayenne, and white pepper.

  3. Add the sardines (or capers and shallot) and incorporate thoroughly.

  4. Gradually mix in the cream, tarragon vinegar, and lemon juice until well combined.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together379 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Form the creamy base that emulsifies the dressing and gives it body.
Thick cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the dressing's texture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.
Mixed mustard
Contributes sharpness and helps bind the emulsion.
Sardines
Supply savory, salty flavour and fish character to the dressing.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the cream, tarragon vinegar, and lemon juice. Adding liquids slowly lets the mashed yolks absorb them and form a stable, smooth emulsion. Dumping them in together can cause the dressing to separate or stay lumpy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, sugar, pepper, capers, cream, tarragon. 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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