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Salad

Water Cress Salad

A chilled salad of finely chopped watercress dressed with a mustard, sugar, and butter vinaigrette, folded with whipped egg whites and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 293 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Water Cress Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select fresh, crisp, well-cleaned watercress and cut it finely.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the salt, dry mustard, and sugar with the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Gradually pour in the melted butter while beating constantly.

  3. Slowly add the vinegar and stir until smooth.

  4. Cook the mixture in a double boiler until thick.

  5. Remove from heat and fold in the whipped egg whites.

  6. Once cooled, gently mix in the whipped cream.

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. Watercress + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Watercress + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and vinegar and thicken the dressing when cooked.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the dressing a smooth, creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the butter and yolks.
Egg whites
Whipped foam that lightens the dressing's texture.
Whipped cream
Adds softness and a light, creamy mouthfeel to the finished dressing.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture in a double boiler until thick. Egg yolks thicken gently as they heat, but too much heat scrambles them. Gentle, indirect heat in a double boiler keeps the dressing smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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