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Salad

Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with flour, butter, mustard, spices, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Make the dressing

  1. In a double boiler, combine flour, butter, mustard, salt, red pepper, sugar, water, and vinegar.

  2. Cook thoroughly over boiling water.

  3. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs.

  4. Stir the beaten yolks into the mixture, cooking for 1 minute longer.

  5. Remove from heat and let it cool completely.

Finish and thin

  1. Once cool, thin the dressing with cream to your desired consistency.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the dressing as they cook gently, adding richness.
Butter
Adds fat for smooth texture and rich flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang.

The step that matters

Stir the beaten yolks into the mixture, cooking for 1 minute longer. Egg yolks set when heated, but if the mixture is too hot or cooked too fast, they can scramble and turn grainy. Keeping the heat gentle over simmering water and stirring constantly lets the yolks thicken the dressing smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, sugar, vinegar, egg, 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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