Skip to main content
Salad

Cream Dressing

A creamy dressing made with sour cream, eggs, mustard, and vinegar, optionally finished with parsley or dill pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix sour cream, eggs, salt, sugar, mustard, celery seed, and white pepper until well combined.

  2. Boil the vinegar in a saucepan.

  3. Stir the egg and cream mixture into the boiling vinegar, mixing well.

  4. Remove from heat as soon as it thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Add minced parsley or dill pickle just before serving, especially if serving with fish.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook gently, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Sour cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the dressing a smooth, creamy body.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens flavor and balances the richness of the cream and eggs.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that complements the tang of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Remove from heat as soon as it thickens. Egg proteins set when heated, and past the point of thickening they can curdle or turn grainy. Pulling the pan off heat promptly keeps the dressing smooth.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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

More cream dressing recipes

Sour 24Sweet 3Whipped 3 See all 48 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes