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Salad

Salad Dressing Without Eggs

A creamy salad dressing made with flour, butter, salt, sugar, mustard, cream, and vinegar, without eggs.

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

Salad Dressing Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, mix the flour, butter, salt, sugar, and mustard together.

  2. Add the cream and place the saucepan over medium heat.

  3. Stir constantly until the mixture thickens.

Finish

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the vinegar.

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. 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Its starch swells in the hot cream and thickens the dressing.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Cream
Provides the liquid base and body, thickening as it heats.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the cream and butter.
Sugar
Adds mild sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until the mixture thickens. Flour starch needs even heat and movement to swell evenly in the cream. If the mixture sits still, it can scorch on the bottom of the pan or form lumps that stay in the dressing.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, cream, 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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