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Salad

Salad Cream

A creamy dressing made with butter, flour, milk, eggs, mustard, vinegar, onion, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salad Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Heat the butter in a pan and stir in the flour without browning it.

  2. Add the milk and stir until smooth, then bring to a boil.

  3. Place the pan in hot water.

Thicken and finish

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with salt, dry mustard, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Stir in the vinegar and add to the boiling milk until it thickens.

  3. If using for potato salad, mix in the grated onion and minced parsley.

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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the base and adds richness to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth base that holds the sauce together.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce that thickens when heated.
Eggs
Set when heated, thickening and emulsifying the sauce into a creamy texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce its sharp, tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Add the egg mixture to the boiling milk. Egg proteins thicken the sauce as they heat, but if the mixture is added too hot or stirred too little it can curdle or turn lumpy. Keeping the pan in hot water and stirring steadily helps the eggs set gently and evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, mustard, 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.

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