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Salad

Salad Dressing, to Keep

A preserved salad dressing made with boiled potatoes, mustard flour, eggs, olive oil, vinegar, sugar, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,458 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Salad Dressing, to Keep

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Sieve the boiled potatoes into a bowl.

  2. Add mustard flour, coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and the raw egg; mix well.

  3. Incorporate the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Stir in olive oil or melted butter, vinegar, white sugar, and sweet cream.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg white gently.

Store

  1. Bottle the dressing and store it 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. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled potatoes
Their starch thickens the dressing and gives it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Raw egg
Its proteins help emulsify the oil and liquids into a stable, creamy dressing.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Their fat and emulsifying lecithin add richness and help bind the dressing smoothly.
Olive oil or melted butter
Supplies fat that gives the dressing richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and balances the richness of the fats.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg white gently. Beaten egg white holds air, and vigorous stirring knocks it out, leaving the dressing dense and less light. Gentle folding keeps the foam intact.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, flour, pepper, egg, olive, vinegar, sugar. 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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