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Salad

Boiled Salad Dressing

A custard-like dressing made from eggs, oil, mustard, sugar, salt, milk, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Boiled Salad Dressing

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 ↓

Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine oil, coarse sea salt, mustard, and sugar in a bowl; stir until smooth.

  2. Add the eggs and beat well.

  3. Mix in the vinegar and then the milk.

Cook and store

  1. Place the bowl in a basin of boiling water and stir until it thickens like soft custard.

  2. Cook for 8–10 minutes for a common white bowl, or 12–15 minutes for a thick bowl, until thickened.

  3. Store in a tightly sealed bottle in a cool place for up to two weeks.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing into a custard-like texture as they set with gentle heat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tangy flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, mellowing the dressing's texture.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the oil into the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the acidity with sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook gently in the water bath. Egg proteins set around 70–80°C, so the mixture thickens smoothly only with gentle, steady heat. Too much heat scrambles the eggs into lumps, while too little leaves the dressing thin.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, 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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