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Salad

Bottled Salad Dressing

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with eggs, sugar, mustard, vinegar, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 base

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs in a bowl.

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

Cook the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, bring vinegar to a boil.

  2. Add butter to the boiling vinegar and stir until melted.

  3. Pour the egg mixture into the saucepan and cook for 3 minutes.

Bottle and store

  1. Let the mixture cool, then fill bottles, seal, 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. 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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Butter
Melted butter adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel that softens the sharp vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the dressing its tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour and helps emulsify the dressing.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble if the mixture gets too hot or is cooked too long. Stirring constantly while the egg mixture cooks keeps it smooth and lets it thicken evenly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

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