Skip to main content
Salad

Cooked Salad Dressing

A cooked salad dressing made with eggs, vinegar, mustard, milk, and oil or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cooked Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the oil and dry ingredients in a bowl.

  2. Add the eggs and beat for five minutes.

  3. Add the vinegar and beat for one minute.

  4. Stir in the milk, then place the bowl in a pan of boiling water.

  5. Cook until the sauce thickens to the consistency of thin cream, about ten minutes, stirring constantly.

  6. If using butter, add it just before removing the sauce from heat.

  7. Cool and bottle any unused sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 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. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Coagulate when heated, thickening the dressing into a smooth sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its sharp, tangy flavour.
Milk
Dilutes the mixture and adds richness and softness to the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the fat into the sauce.
Oil or butter
Adds fat for richness and smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce over boiling water. Egg proteins set gently as the sauce heats. If the heat is too high or the sauce is not stirred constantly, the eggs can scramble and curdle, so the sauce should be cooked slowly and stirred until it thickens.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vinegar, milk, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes