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Sauce

Boiled Dressing

A sauce made from butter, flour, milk, mustard, paprika, vinegar, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Boiled Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix together the butter, flour, and salt.

  2. Add sugar, milk, and mustard, then boil for five minutes while stirring carefully.

  3. Stir in paprika and vinegar, then bring the mixture to a boiling point.

  4. Remove from heat to reduce temperature.

  5. Add the beaten eggs and return to low heat, cooking until thick.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps form the base with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the dressing and gives it body once cooked.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a creamy sauce.
Eggs
Set when heated, adding thickness and structure to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tangy flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs. Eggs can curdle or scramble if they meet high heat directly. Removing the pan from heat first and returning it to low heat lets the eggs thicken the sauce gently and evenly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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