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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, combine mustard, flour, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add butter and egg yolks, then mix until smooth.

  3. Gradually add water to the mixture to achieve a smooth consistency.

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

  5. 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. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 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 with gentle heat.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so the dressing becomes smooth and clings to the salad.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sharpness once the dressing is cold.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Thicken the vinegar mixture over low heat. Egg yolks scramble if heated too fast or too hot, which leaves lumps. Gentle, low heat while stirring lets the yolks and flour thicken the dressing smoothly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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