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Cooked Salad Dressing

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the oil and dry ingredients well.

  2. Add the eggs and beat for five minutes.

  3. Add the vinegar and beat for one minute.

  4. Stir in the milk.

  5. Place the bowl in a pan of boiling water.

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

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

Cool and store

  1. Cool the sauce.

  2. 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 as they heat, thickening the dressing into a creamy sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang and balances the richness.
Milk
Dilutes the mixture and adds smoothness and body as it cooks.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook gently in the water bath. Egg proteins set at moderate heat and can scramble or curdle if overheated. Constant stirring and a gentle water bath keep the sauce smooth as 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.

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