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Salad

Rich Salad Dressing

A thick, creamy dressing made with mustard, sugar, cayenne pepper, salt, egg yolks, lemon juice, vinegar, oil, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Rich Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks, mustard, sugar, cayenne pepper, and salt until very light and thick using a wooden spoon or a Dover beater.

  2. Gradually add a few drops of oil at a time until the mixture becomes very thick. Once thick, you can add the oil more rapidly.

  3. When the mixture is so thick that the beater turns hard, add a little vinegar.

  4. After adding all the oil and vinegar, the dressing should be very thick.

  5. Stir in the lemon juice and whipped cream.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill in the refrigerator for a few hours before serving.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar, giving the dressing its thick, creamy body.
Oil
Forms the bulk of the dressing, providing richness and body once emulsified.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion so the oil stays dispersed in the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and extra creaminess to the finished dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar and lemon.

The step that matters

Add the oil slowly at the start. Egg yolks can only hold oil in a stable emulsion if it is added gradually while beating. Adding too much oil early causes the mixture to split and become oily instead of thick.

“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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