Name: Salad Dressing Without Oil
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon salt; ½ teaspoon white pepper; 3 tablespoons thick sour cream; 1 tablespoon vinegar; Optional: sugar from the rind of a fresh lemon

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Salad Dressing Without Oil

Ingredients

1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon white pepper
3 tablespoons thick sour cream
1 tablespoon vinegar
Optional: sugar from the rind of a fresh lemon

Directions

Mix the salt and white pepper with the thick sour cream.
Beat well and add the vinegar.
If desired, rub a little sugar on the lemon rind and dissolve it in the vinegar before mixing with the cream.

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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,658 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
White pepper + vinegartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,154 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Thick sour cream: Provides body, richness and a creamy texture in place of oil.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tangy flavour.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white pepper, cream, vinegar, sugar):

Strawberryfits about as well
Vanillafits about as well
Lemonthe original
Pineapplefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against white pepper, cream, vinegar, sugar. 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.