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Cream Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with butter, egg yolks, vinegar, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing base

  1. In a double boiler, cream the butter.

  2. Add salt, sugar, mustard, and paprika (or cayenne) to the butter.

  3. In a separate bowl, slightly beat the egg yolks.

  4. Slowly add the hot vinegar to the egg yolks while beating constantly until thick.

  5. Remove from heat and mix in the seasoned butter thoroughly.

Finish and serve

  1. Allow to cool completely, then fold in the whipped cream and serve.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + tarragontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,572 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the vinegar mixture and emulsify the dressing into a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy mouthfeel to the dressing.
Hot vinegar
Acidity that sharpens the flavor and, with the yolks, helps create the thickened texture.
Whipped cream
Lightens the dressing and adds a soft, airy texture when folded in.

The step that matters

Slowly add the hot vinegar to the egg yolks while beating constantly. Adding hot liquid too fast or without constant beating can scramble the egg yolks, leaving lumps instead of a smooth, thick base. Gradual addition and steady whisking let the yolk proteins thicken evenly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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