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Bottled Salad Dressing

A sweet and spicy salad dressing made with sugar, salt, cream, mustard, butter, vinegar, cayenne, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Bottled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Add sugar, salt, cream, mustard, vinegar, and cayenne; mix thoroughly.

Cook and store

  1. Heat the vinegar in a saucepan.

  2. Add the butter to the heated vinegar and boil.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the egg yolk mixture, stirring well while cooking.

  4. Let it cool, then bottle and store in a cool place.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing and emulsify it into a smooth, creamy texture as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and body, giving the dressing a smooth, mellow mouthfeel.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the dressing its tang and helps preserve it.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Stirring while the hot mixture meets the egg yolks. Pouring hot liquid onto egg yolks can scramble them if added too fast or not stirred. Constant stirring while pouring spreads the heat evenly, so the yolks thicken the dressing smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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