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Salad

Boiled Dressing with Oil

A cold dressing made by emulsifying mustard, salt, cayenne, sugar, egg yolks, vinegar, and oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Boiled Dressing with Oil

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the mustard, salt, cayenne, and sugar.

  2. Add the oil and vinegar to the dry ingredients and heat the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Slowly pour the heated mixture into the well-beaten egg yolks.

  2. Return the mixture to a double boiler and stir until thick.

  3. Serve very cold, adding whipped cream if desired.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 as they cook and help bind the oil and vinegar into a smooth emulsion.
Mustard
Helps emulsify the oil and vinegar and adds a sharp, savory flavor.
Oil
Provides fat for richness and a smooth, silky texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.

The step that matters

Pouring the heated mixture into the yolks. Adding hot liquid to egg yolks too quickly can scramble them. Pouring slowly while beating gradually warms the yolks so they thicken smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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