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Cream Salad Dressing

A creamy dressing made with butter, sugar, flour, milk, eggs, mustard, cayenne pepper, vinegar, and optional whipped cream and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Cream Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, sugar, salt, cayenne pepper, and mustard together.

  2. Add a little of the milk to the dry mixture to form a smooth paste.

  3. Gradually add the rest of the milk and boil in a double boiler, stirring constantly until thickened like custard.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the eggs, cooking for an additional minute.

  5. After removing from the stove, mix in the vinegar.

Store and serve

  1. Store in a self-sealing jar; it will keep for weeks.

  2. When ready to serve, add whipped cream and a little lemon juice.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + flourtop 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).

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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and give it a rich, custard-like body.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, stable base for the dressing.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with gentle sweetness.

The step that matters

Make the smooth paste before adding the milk. Flour clumps if added to hot liquid without first being blended into a little cold liquid. Making a smooth paste first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the custard thickens without lumps.

Swap the mustard

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

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

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