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Dessert

California Boiled Dressing

A creamy dressing made with egg yolks, lemon juice, olive oil, vinegar, powdered sugar, salt, and heavy cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,922 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

California Boiled Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing base

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add 4 tablespoons of olive oil while continuing to beat.

  3. Stir in the vinegar and lemon juice.

  4. Cook the mixture over hot water until it thickens, then cool it.

Finish and serve

  1. Gradually add the remaining olive oil, powdered sugar, and salt.

  2. Just before serving, fold in the whipped heavy 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.

  1. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and thicken the dressing when gently cooked.
Olive oil
Provides fat that gives the dressing its richness and body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its sharp, tangy flavour.
Heavy cream
Folded in whipped, it lightens the dressing and adds softness and richness.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture over hot water until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins gently set with heat; cooking too fast or too hot can scramble them, leaving a grainy texture. Cooling afterward stops the cooking before the dressing is finished.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, sugar, vinegar, cream. 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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