Skip to main content
Salad

Salad Dressing

A simple vinaigrette dressing made with oil, mustard, egg yolk, vinegar, salt, and optional cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Salad Dressing

Why it works: Mustard and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,340 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk.

  2. Gradually rub in the oil, followed by the mustard, salt, and vinegar.

  3. If the mixture does not combine well, add a few drops of vinegar to help it emulsify.

Serve

  1. For variation, you can substitute oil with melted butter, cream, or juice from boiled ham.

  2. Pour the dressing over your salad just before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 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. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Acts as an emulsifier, holding the oil and vinegar together in a smooth dressing.
Oil
Provides fat and body, giving the dressing its rich texture.
Mustard
Helps stabilise the emulsion and adds sharp flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Adding the oil gradually. Adding oil slowly while the egg yolk is beaten lets small droplets disperse and be coated by the yolk's proteins. Adding it too fast can cause the emulsion to break and the dressing to separate.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, egg, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, egg, vinegar, 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.

More salad dressing recipes

Boiled 72Cream 68French 58Cooked 45Fruit 41Chicken 31 See all 528 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipesFrench DressingFrench Dressing58 recipes