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Salad Dressing for Potatoes

A dressing made with egg yolks, vinegar, butter, onion, parsley, mustard, sweet cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salad Dressing for Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks (or whole eggs) well.

  2. Add the boiling vinegar and cook in a double boiler until thick, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the butter until cool and well combined.

Finish and season

  1. Stir in the minced onion and parsley.

  2. Once cool, season with mustard, sweet cream, salt, and pepper to taste.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they set during gentle cooking and bind it into a smooth emulsion.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the eggs and butter.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the texture and helps the dressing turn smooth and creamy.

The step that matters

Cook until thick over a double boiler. Egg proteins set gradually at moderate heat. Cooking too fast or too hot can scramble the eggs and leave lumps, so stir constantly and cook gently.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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