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Salad

Farmer Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with soured cream, egg yolk, mustard, salt, sugar, cayenne pepper, and lime juice or cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Farmer Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the soured cream and egg yolk.

  2. Add the French mustard, salt, sugar, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Stir in the lime juice or cider vinegar.

  4. Blend thoroughly but do not cook.

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. Pepper + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Mustard + limetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Soured cream
Provides body and a tangy richness that forms the base of the dressing.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies and thickens the dressing, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
French mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps bind the emulsion together.
Lime juice or cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Blend thoroughly but do not cook. Egg yolk must be fully dispersed without heating, since heat would scramble the yolk and curdle the cream, leaving a grainy rather than smooth dressing.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limethe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Cherryfits about as well

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