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German Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with hard‑boiled eggs, raw egg yolks, olive oil, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

German Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sieve the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs into a bowl.

  2. Add the raw egg yolks and salt, then beat until creamy.

  3. Gradually add the olive oil while continuing to beat.

  4. Mix in the vinegar, pepper, and sugar until light and creamy.

  5. If desired, add capers for fish dressing.

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. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  3. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 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

Raw egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and vinegar, giving the dressing a creamy, thick body.
Olive oil
Provides fat and richness, forming the body of the dressing as it is beaten in.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a mellow, rich texture from the cooked yolks.

The step that matters

Gradually add the olive oil while continuing to beat. Oil added too quickly can overwhelm the yolks and break the emulsion, so the dressing separates instead of turning thick and creamy.

Swap the capers

The recipe marks capers as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, olive, vinegar, pepper, sugar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, olive, vinegar, pepper, 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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