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Egoless Boiled Salad Dressing

A boiled salad dressing made without eggs, using mustard, celery salt, salt, flour, pepper, sugar, vinegar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Egoless Boiled Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.

  2. Add the cream and stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually add boiling vinegar while stirring continuously.

  4. Cook over low heat until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

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 + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, giving it body without eggs.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps balance the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Gradually add boiling vinegar while stirring continuously. Adding hot vinegar slowly while stirring keeps the flour and cream from clumping or curdling, so the dressing cooks into a smooth, even mixture.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

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