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Salad

Dressing for Canned Lobster, Etc

A dressing made from hard‑boiled egg yolks, mustard, sugar, vinegar, and oil or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Canned Lobster, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs to a smooth paste with salad oil or melted butter.

  2. Add made mustard and fine white sugar to the egg yolk mixture.

  3. Gradually mix in the vinegar until well combined.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks form a smooth, rich base that gives the dressing body.
Salad oil or melted butter
Fat coats the yolk paste, adding smoothness and a rounder mouthfeel.
Made mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the dressing.
Fine white sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with gentle sweetness.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and keeps it tangy.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in the vinegar. Adding vinegar slowly to the yolk and fat paste lets the mixture emulsify smoothly instead of separating. Mixing it in all at once can break the texture and leave the dressing thin and greasy.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, 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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