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Cream Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with mustard, lemon juice, oil, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine salt, pepper, mustard, and egg yolks; mix thoroughly.

  2. Add a few drops of lemon juice while stirring continuously.

  3. Slowly add the oil, mixing well until it reaches the consistency of mayonnaise.

  4. Incorporate more lemon juice and oil until both are fully used.

  5. Gradually mix in the cream, a little at a time.

  6. Keep the bowl very cold by surrounding it with cracked ice.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
Emulsifiers that bind the oil and lemon juice into a smooth, thick dressing.
Salad oil
Supplies the fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the dressing its body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and helps stabilize the emulsion.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a softer, creamier texture to the finished dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly. Oil must be added in a slow, thin stream while mixing so the egg yolks can emulsify it. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving the dressing oily and separated.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, egg, cream, pepper):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, egg, cream, pepper. 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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