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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, mustard, sugar, oil, vinegar, and optional cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

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 Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs until very fine and smooth.

  2. Mix in 1 teaspoon of English mustard and 1 teaspoon of salt.

  3. Beat in the yolks of two raw eggs.

  4. Add 2 teaspoons of fine sugar.

  5. Slowly pour in fresh sweet oil while beating until the mixture thickens.

  6. Add vinegar until the dressing reaches your desired consistency.

  7. If the dressing is not spicy enough, add a little Cayenne pepper.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolks
Emulsify the oil into the base, giving the dressing a thick, smooth body.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add body and a creamy, smooth texture to the dressing.
Fresh sweet oil
Forms the fat phase of the dressing, adding richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.

The step that matters

Slowly pour in the oil while beating. Adding oil too fast breaks the emulsion, so the dressing stays runny or separates. Pouring slowly while beating lets the yolk lecithin surround the oil droplets, producing a thick, stable dressing.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits less well
  4. Cabbagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, vinegar, 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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