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Salad

Dressing for Cabbage or Chicken Salad

A creamy dressing made with mustard, flour, sugar, butter, egg yolks, vinegar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dressing for Cabbage or Chicken Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix mustard, flour, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add butter and egg yolks, then wet with enough water to create a smooth mixture.

  3. Thicken 1 cup of vinegar with this mixture over low heat.

  4. Once cold, stir in 1 cup of cream.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the dressing as they set gently with heat.
Flour
Thickens the liquid and gives the dressing body so it clings to food.
Butter
Adds richness and smooths the texture of the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Cream
Adds richness and a creamy, mellow texture to the finished dressing.

The step that matters

Thicken 1 cup of vinegar with the mixture over low heat. Egg yolks and flour thicken only gently; high heat can scramble the yolks and cause lumps, so keep the heat low and stir steadily.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

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