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Salad

Cooked Salad Dressing

A thickened salad dressing made by cooking flour, butter, egg, vinegar, salt, water, sugar, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard 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 ↓

Cooked Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, melted butter, beaten egg, vinegar, salt, water, sugar, and mustard.

  2. Cook the mixture over hot water, stirring continuously, until it reaches the 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.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

Egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks and gives it body.
Flour
Thickens the dressing and stabilises it so it does not separate.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that defines the dressing's flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking over hot water while stirring. Egg proteins thicken gently when heated, but too much heat or no stirring can scramble the egg. Constant stirring over moderate heat keeps the dressing smooth and lets the flour starch thicken it evenly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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