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Dressing for Slaw, or Lettuce

A custard-like dressing for slaw made with egg yolks, mustard, salt, vinegar, butter, pepper, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Dressing for Slaw, or Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with mustard and coarse sea salt.

  2. Pour in the vinegar and add the butter and pepper.

  3. Steam the mixture over a kettle of boiling water until it thickens to custard consistency.

  4. Just before serving, stir in the fresh milk.

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

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 into a custard as they set with gentle heat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the dressing.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel.
Fresh milk
Loosens the thickened custard into a pourable dressing.

The step that matters

Steam until custard consistency. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. Too much heat or too long can curdle them, so the mixture should be cooked gently and watched closely until it coats a spoon.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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