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Salad

Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, mustard, butter, vinegar, and milk, thickened by a double boiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Salad Dressing

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

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

  2. Mix in the sugar, pepper, salt, mustard, melted butter, vinegar, and milk.

  3. Set the bowl in a kettle of hot water and stir constantly until it thickens.

Cool and serve

  1. Let it cool before using.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Coagulate with gentle heat to thicken the dressing and give it body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar and yolks.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the mixture into a pourable dressing.

The step that matters

Stir constantly over hot water until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. If the heat is too high or the mixture is left unstirred, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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